All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Wheaton's 2026 Investor Day. My name is Emma Murray. I am the Vice President of Investor Relations here at Wheaton. We are thrilled to have you with us, whether in the room here in Toronto or joining online. Before we start, just note that there will be forward-looking statements made in the presentations today, so I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with the cautionary statements here on the page and in our recent filings. All right. Many of you have followed Wheaton for years, so our objective here is to really take you beyond the story that you already know. We are looking to give you fresh insights into how we allocate capital, the nuances behind how we structure streams, and importantly, how we quantify those structural mechanisms, and how without those, they may affect returns over the long term.
We will have a five-minute refreshment break partway through the program, though feel free to step out anytime. Washrooms are to the right and through the breakfast room. We are very grateful to have three of our partners here today, Hemlo, Vale Base Metals and Montage. They are happy to take questions immediately following their presentations. For Wheaton, we will have a dedicated Q&A panel at the end, so please hold your questions for that time. For those newer to Wheaton, we would encourage you to check out our guidebook. It was published yesterday, available on our website, and it provides a very thorough overview and introduction to streaming and Wheaton's specific approach. Before we begin, I just want to zoom out for a moment and leave you with one number to help frame the day. When you invest in Wheaton, you are investing in ounces rather than overhead.
We are 47 people worldwide. That is the entire company. In fact, you will be hearing from 15% of the company here today. To put that efficiency into perspective, we looked across the major miners, other streaming peers, and some of the world's most valuable technology companies. On market cap and net income per employee, Wheaton delivers the highest value. There are remarkably few layers between the value generated at Wheaton and our shareholders. The streaming model, of course, is inherently efficient. We should know. We created it. But the model is available to everyone, and what differentiates Wheaton is the way that we execute the model. That is really the theme of what you will hear today. We are going to talk about how we select and identify the highest quality assets and how we structure them to protect the downside and preserve the upside.
With that, it is my pleasure to welcome our President and CEO, Haytham Hodaly.
Thanks, Emma. Thank you, Emma, and thank you everyone for being here today. I know how difficult it is to take a half a day out of your schedule in this environment and spend it with us, so we do appreciate it. I know quite a few faces here, but I just wanted to give a bit of an introduction as to who I am because some of you don't know me. My background, I am a mining engineer by education. I then subsequently did a master's in mineral economics. I have been in the industry, sitting in your seats valuing mines and valuing mining companies for over 32 years, the last 15 with Wheaton Precious Metals. So if anyone can understand what you guys have to do, it is definitely me at this point, and we do appreciate you guys being here.
Wheaton's approach has never been to be the biggest streaming company. It has always been to be the best streaming company. What does that mean? That means looking at the highest quality assets, the lowest cost, the longest life, strongest partners, and a pure precious metals focus. That disciplined approach to acquisitions, that is what creates value for our stakeholders. When I say stakeholders, we are looking at our shareholders, who have been with us some for almost two decades. Our partners, who have come back to us for repeat business on a regular basis. We have had, in the last 10 years alone, over two-thirds of our business has been repeat business, or people we have dealt with in the industry that understand that Wheaton will treat them fairly. Last, and definitely just as important, is our neighbors.
We give back significantly to the communities in and around the mines where we get our streams and where we live and operate, and that is incredibly important to us. We have given over, and I think Patrick is going to go through this, close to $60 million since inception back to these types of things. So a lot of bullet points on this slide. I think the only thing I want to highlight is I will highlight four of them. The first one is $4.6 billion. We have committed $4.6 billion into assets this year alone. You will hear me throw out some numbers over the next few slides, but on average, we are probably somewhere closer to $900 million- $1 billion on annual committed towards new streams.
That $4.6 billion has been some very incredibly high-quality assets that we have added, with some new jurisdictions as well, and we will talk more about that a little bit later. 2/3 of the transactions have been completed, as I said, over the last decade with repeat customers. That is people who know us and recognize that Wheaton is going to provide a fair transaction for them. $3 billion, you see the top right, that $3 billion we are going to be generating, given our growth profile at current spot prices, close to $3 billion a year in annual cash flows. That is $3 billion we have to continue to deploy in this environment, which we are incredibly excited to do. We will go through some of our balance sheet and give you an idea of how much our capacity is going forward.
But at this point, we have close to $2.5 billion- $3 billion in additional capacity that we can continue to deploy even after doing a $4.3 billion Antamina stream. The last thing I would say is sustainability, and Patrick is going to do it a lot of justice, but I will say we are one of the sector-leading companies in sustainability, and we are incredibly proud of where that is going. There are three different things to focus on here.
The first is our precious metals exposure. We derive 99% of our revenues from precious metals. That is a focus going forward. That was between 2026 and 2030, it is going to be slightly gold-weighted with the growth profile that we have going forward. You are going to see significant increases in revenues over and above, and I will show you a slide after this where we are right now.
Life of the asset. We are currently sitting at 23 years of reserves. That 23 years of reserves is complemented with an additional 15 years of M&I and another 23 years of reserves. That is over 60 years of existing mine life based on assets that we have in our portfolio right now. So something we are incredibly proud of.
As I said, on the last decade, we have deployed close to $900 million. This year is a bit of an anomaly, obviously, with the big Antamina deal, but we have deployed close to $900 million or committed close to $900 million a year over the last decade, and that is something we continue to go forward. But what is important is we are not just committing to any deal. We only have 22 operating mines, which you will see in a subsequent slide here. We are only focusing on the highest quality.
The pie chart on the far right shows you that 80% of our production comes from assets that fall in the lowest half of the cost curve. Those are the assets that our partners will invest back into, despite what is happening with the commodity pricing. In a declining commodity price environment or an increasing commodity price environment, those are the assets that always get invested back into. So very proud of our portfolio that we have accumulated. I mentioned this as a comparison to some of our peers here. Our revenue stream right now is looking incredible, and the key is it is 99% precious metals, and it is greater than any of our competitors. This is just based on 2025.
Obviously, we have seen significant increases in commodity prices since 2025, and we have got a phenomenal growth profile, which we will highlight here shortly, which is going to continue to drive that forward. This chart is a five-year trailing chart that shows how we have performed relative to metal prices, relative to various indices, relative to mining companies, and relative to our peers. As you can see, we have had one of the strongest performances over the last five years, with stock up close to 247%.
This slide shows you how diversified we are. We are not just focused in one specific jurisdiction. You can see we are North, South, Europe, Africa. We have expanded into two continents in the last year or two, in Australia and a little bit in Japan on a royalty front just to try and dip our toe in the water there. This is the key with Wheaton.
The diversification continues to reduce the risk that our investors face, and it's not that we're just diversified, we're diversified into the highest quality assets in the world. This slide highlights the fact that streaming works for almost any company out there, whether it's the largest company in the world or some of the smaller companies in the world. The key is it works in any environment. It can accomplish several things. One is de-leveraging. Two, it provides capital sometimes to get you from earlier stage scoping studies all the way through to the end of feasibility. Three, it actually can be utilized to continue to strengthen your balance sheet when you're looking at acquisitions. Four, we've used it in M&A and supported partners, one of whom which is here today, as they've been looking to acquire companies. And five, for development projects.
In a time over the last decade where we found that equity prices were rather depressed and a significant number of our partners and other parties out there were looking for ways to grow their companies, that's where streaming actually worked well. Since 2004 is when the streaming model developed, when we actually created the streaming model, I would say. There's been close to $38 billion invested into precious metal streams in the last 22 years, and Wheaton has been successful in deploying capital for almost half of those, close to 49% of that. Right now, if you look at it, there's probably close to, we say, 20+ streaming firms, but if you factor in royalty companies and streaming, it's well in excess of 30 different companies out there. This is an incredibly competitive environment.
Our ability to continue to deploy that capital is what makes us different and deploy it accretively, and that's the key. The other thing I'll mention is on this slide here is we have not only continued to deploy capital, but we've deployed it into some of the best assets in the world. Those assets are the assets that the investors, analysts, et cetera, would love to have in a portfolio. As you can see, there's some repeat business there, and that repeat business is what differentiates us, is people coming back, our partners coming back, people who know us in the industry coming to us, coming in and saying, "We don't want to have a process.
Give us a competitive bid and we're happy to move forward with you." That's what makes Wheaton a little different, is that we treat people incredibly well, with respect, fairly, and so that they don't have to run processes. This is probably one of my favorite slides because this really highlights everything we've accomplished over the last, I'd say, 22 years, but specifically in the last, I would say, decade. We've had a significant focus on development stage opportunities. We realized that with commodity prices rising, not everybody's always going to need streaming. So we're always trying to think ahead is where can the next avenue of streams come from? So we locked into a bunch. As you can see, there's at least nine there, and there's at least another 15 on top of that, development stage opportunities that we could actually help fund.
The key is last year, we produced close to 804,000 gold- equivalent ounces. We are expecting by 2030 to be at 1.2 million gold- equivalent ounces of production to our account. What is interesting about that is not just a goal. That is actually happening. Six of those nine projects that you see in green in the middle column are already in construction and several are approaching commercial production. The other three are imminently going to be starting construction. So this is certain growth that you are seeing. That is 50% growth. In terms of magnitude of growth, that is 400,000 oz of growth that we are expecting to see in the next four years alone. That is, from a magnitude, greater than any of our competitors and greater than a lot of the mining companies out there that are looking to grow as well.
I will say, this is pretty conservative growth, and one of the things that I will highlight is a significant number of these on the left under operating and in development have already outlined plans to continue to expand their existing portfolios. I will not go into a lot of detail, but I can tell you there is expansions coming at Marmato, there is expansions coming at Koné, expansions coming at Fenix potentially, Kurmuk. These are all not factored into that 1.2 million ounces. There is a lot of organic growth within our organic growth that we are very excited about as well.
This could not have been accomplished without the experienced team that you see here in front of you, with its technical capabilities, its creativity in structuring transactions, and its financial excellence that is incredibly important as we are actually looking at new transactions. We are not just looking to do deals. As you saw, we only have 22 operating mines. Theoretically, we could do a lot more deals than that, but we only do the best deals and deals that are accretive to our shareholders, and that is one of the most important things to highlight here.
This last slide just highlights what we view as the Wheaton difference. We have shown some slide previously that showed our outperformance relative to our peers and relative to the indices and relative to the commodities. The question is obviously why? Why has Wheaton done so well over this period of time? The key is not all streams are created equal. Keep that in mind. What separates them is the discipline, and that is what we term the Wheaton difference. So there are two reasons why our streams outperform in the long run.
First, we invest in the right assets. We have a technical team that does deep dives, comes up with their own mine plans, own reserves, own resources, and vets that against the existing plans. If we do not like what we see, we use our models and our valuations. Secondly, we are extremely selective. We probably scan over 100 opportunities a year, and we do maybe three to five. So less than 5% of the opportunities is what we actually focus on, the highest quality opportunities we see with the most potential, the most growth, the strongest management team, the highest quality. That is what we focus on.
Lastly, I would say the second point would be creating the right structure. Finding the asset is only half the challenge. Through structure, we enhance the upside while limiting risks that come from the downside, and we are going to go into a little bit more detail on that here going forward. We have no cost exposure, which gives us very high margins. We have exploration upside on our area of interest, and no extra cost almost on all our projects. We have security and parent company guarantees on a majority of them, too, which gives you the comfort and shareholders the comfort that these streams are going to be around for a very long time.
In conclusion, the right assets with the right structure, that is what we term the Wheaton difference. That is what turns a good business model into outsized returns for our shareholders. It compounds. The structure keeps delivering long after the deal closes.
Throughout this next couple of hours, we are going to be highlighting certain areas that we really are very proud of as we enter into this new transactions and how we structure our company. Neil Burns will be talking about the technical due diligence and why we say no to over 95% of the opportunities. Curt Bernardi and Vincent Lau, they are going to talk about the creativity and the discipline that goes into structuring a Wheaton stream and what makes a Wheaton stream different from some of the other parties that are out there. With that, I would like to introduce you to Neil Burns, our VP of Corporate Development. Thank you all again for being here.
Good morning, everyone. As Haytham mentioned, I am going to be walking you through our approach to technical due diligence. Right from the beginning of Wheaton, it was recognized the importance of having an internal technical team rather than relying on consultants. I joined the company in 2008 as the company's first geologist. At that time, our corporate development team was a team of three, led by Randy Smallwood.
Over the years, as the streaming model was endorsed, the number of opportunities has grown, and so has our technical team, as shown here on the screen. You can see by their titles that they are experts in geology, mining engineering, metallurgy, and social science. They have gained international experience in both exploration, operations, and consulting roles, and they have got an average of 27 years in the industry. I think that is evidenced by a bit of gray hair you can see from the photos.
This depth of experience is extremely important in allowing us to sift through, as Haytham mentioned, these large volumes of opportunities and filter it down to the key high-quality assets that fit the Wheaton portfolio. Over the years, we have gained a good reputation for the quality and strength of our technical review, and that is something that we take extremely seriously. We refer to our endorsement of a project as the Wheaton stamp of approval, and that can be especially important for smaller companies that have not yet gained the recognition in the market that they deserve. Our approach to due diligence is to review the entire buildup of estimates, right from the exploration data through to final payable metal. These boxes highlight the various disciplines that we cover.
Our review looks to identify not just the risks, but also the upside that our partner has not yet been able to quantify. That upside can come from a whole host of different areas, such as a view that the resource grades are perhaps understated, maybe there is room for higher process recoveries, and perhaps there is potential for plant expansion. I will say we also put a lot of effort into exploration upside. Ore bodies are only drilled off to a critical mass, so we really look at what is the potential beyond what is currently defined. Each of our conclusions gets incorporated into our Wheaton profile and valuation model. To give you a sense of how this works in practice, I will walk you through our approach to resource review over the next few slides.
Data quality is the starting point, and getting comfortable with historic data and QAQC are two key aspects. A lot of old projects were not previously economic are getting a new life in this higher metal price environment. These projects may not have had the attention to data quality that we expect today, so we need to be comfortable that steps have been taken to verify this historic data. On the QAQC side, programs must be in place to validate the assay data and ensure that it is both accurate, precise and free of contamination. An issue that we occasionally see, which is quite surprising, is the companies have a good program in place, but no one is actually monitoring it. Results are coming in that suggest problems and issues that should be followed up on, but no one is doing it.
In fact, recently we looked at a project where the CRM results were coming in similar to the slide, the graph, sorry, you see in the bottom right here, where the results are high. That is an indication that perhaps your lab is actually reporting higher results than it should. In this case, no one was following up on it. Asleep at the wheel. So we passed on this opportunity for a host of different reasons, but the largest one was really that lack of attention to data quality.
The geological interpretation is worth discussing. It is really the backbone of resource estimation, and it is the point where science and art really do need to meet. Too often we see what we call connect-the-dots interpretations. These are very simple interpretations that only look at the grade intervals. The figure here shows three different interpretations drawn from the exact same drill holes.
This is just a schematic, but the point is that interpretation is subjective. You need to look at all the available geological data and build interpretation that adheres to all of that. Perhaps the data is showing that interpretation B is most appropriate, but the geologist may realize that, well, if I go with A or C, I produce a larger resource. Not only does interpretation result in different quantities of metal, but it also results in a different location of that metal. You get underground, and it is not where you expect it to be. Also can be oriented in a different position, which can flow through to your stope designs and even through to your mining method.
An issue that we most commonly see is where companies really try and stitch together the highest grades in their drill intervals, without really looking at the geology to see that it is supportive of that. Where we disagree with our partner's approach, we build our own interpretation. On this slide here, on the left-hand portion, you can see there is a lot of components that go into a block model, and our team does a deep dive on all of these. We come up with our own Wheaton block model that is based on perhaps our interpretation, if we are not happy with the partners, and our view on what the estimation parameters should be. An issue we often find is that the treatment of extreme grades in the interpretation have not been properly accounted for.
They have not actually been controlled, resulting in a resource which has got elevated grades that we are not comfortable, that we do not support. As the figure on the right shows, the Wheaton block model can actually come up with values and results that differ from the partners. We take our results and our view on exploration potential, and we weave that into the Wheaton profile evaluation.
I will say at Wheaton, we celebrate not just the deals that we do, but also the flawed projects that we successfully avoid. Over the years, we have evaluated many projects facing a wide range of challenges, be it technical deficiencies, environmental concerns, permitting hurdles, or a lack of community support. Without naming the project, I would like to take you through one here, which a few years ago failed on a topic I discussed a few slides ago, a flawed geological model.
This is a single asset developer that went out for construction financing, and we participated in the process. At the onset, we thought it actually looked quite attractive, but as we dug into it, we found the geological model was assuming a continuity that the data simply did not support. The resulting Wheaton block model based on our interpretation produced less than half of the ounces that the partner had. We decided not to bid on the opportunity, and one of our competitors actually acquired a stream. A year later, the mine went into production, and shortly thereafter, underground operations were halted because the geology was not hanging together. An independent group was brought in to do a resource estimate, and surprisingly, their results matched ours very closely. The mine never achieved commercial production, and shortly thereafter, the company went bankrupt.
That is not an outcome that we took any pleasure in. It is not good for anyone associated with mine to have a mine shut down, and certainly not a good outcome for our industry. However, we did feel validated that our conclusions on the viability of the project were correct, and successfully avoiding a bad investment is exactly the type of result that is worth celebrating. I hope this quick walk through our due diligence process has provided a sense of not only our level of rigor, but also our selectivity. To put our discipline into perspective, over the last 12 months, we have looked at, as Haytham mentioned, over 100 opportunities. I do admit, quite a number of those, upon a very quick screening, are just not a fit for the company.
Of those 100 that we looked at, you can see the steps we went through in terms of submitting IOIs, site visits, and we only transacted on five. Our deal with BHP on Antamina, the Hemlo Mine, Spring Valley, Jervois, Spanish Mountain, for a total of $5.5 billion. This concept of a funnel is an accurate analogy of our process, where detailed due diligence eliminates the large majority of opportunities that we see and capital is only deployed to the most compelling opportunities. Our objective in every transaction is to land on a value that is both fair and structured well for both us and the counterparty. We are looking for win-win situations. Market performance provides a valuable indication on whether we have achieved this outcome.
This table here shows the share price performance of a number of our partners after recent transactions, and you can see on the far right column how they performed relative to their peers, dramatically outperforming. I believe that the Wheaton stamp of approval played a role, I should say, in the smaller market cap companies' performance, such as KGL and Spanish Mountain. This level of market support reinforces the value of streaming as an attractive, non-dilutive source of capital and validates the choice of choosing Wheaton as a partner. Another indication that our approach is working is repeat business. As Haytham mentioned, since 2014, more than 70% of our transactions have been with counterparties that we have worked with in the past. Partners who have every financing option in front of them keep choosing to come back.
That is the clearest evidence that our focus on win-win structures and all the benefits we bring beyond the initial check is working. With that, I would like to hand things over to Curt and Vincent to go through our structure. Thank you.
Good morning, everybody. As Neil has said, asset selection is so important to Wheaton, and certainly asset quality is the foundation of our business. But that is only part of the equation. The asset quality really determines the opportunity that we have in front of us. It is the deal terms, it is the deal provisions, it is the deal structure that we layer on top of that asset that really determine how much of that opportunity accrues to Wheaton and Wheaton shareholders. While there is a number of deal terms, a number of deal protections that we look to get, we are going to focus today on a couple key categories. There we go. A couple key categories. We have grouped them into two groups. One is deal terms that can really enhance the upside on a deal when things go well.
Neil talked about mine life expansions, improvement in recoveries, improvement in grades, metal price going up. How do we enhance that upside if and when that does happen? The second category of deal terms is going to be, things sometimes go wrong, even on a Wheaton stream. It is a 40-year term, things may go wrong from time to time, and what do we do to help mitigate the downside when that does happen? Vincent's going to talk about that in a few minutes here. Some of these deal terms may not attract much attention when the deal is first announced. You will not see it in the press release. I was just talking to someone before this started about this, and it is difficult to discern a deal where you have these protections and a deal where you do not. It is not a focus on day one.
But over time, these elements can make a profound impact on the value of that stream going forward. At its core, our philosophy is that our mandate, and Haytham talked about this, but our mandate to shareholders is to provide long-term exposure to both price and growth optionality on precious metals. It is that simple. Everything else we do flows from that principle. Let us talk about a couple of those elements. Drop-downs. Our approach on drop-downs is to limit it to 1/3 of the original stream size. We always retain at least 2/3 of the original stream that we entered into. That drop-down, we aim it to happen around once we have gotten back substantial return of our upfront investment. You will see some streams that have a bigger drop-down and Koné, which we will hear about later, is an example of that.
But in those situations, not only have we gotten a return of our investment or seek to have a return of our investment at the time of the drop-down, we also look to have some protection for any delays in deliveries that might have happened relative to our original investment production profile. If we do not have that element, again, generally our standard is a 1/3 drop-down at most. On buybacks, we do not agree to buybacks except in very limited circumstances. If we have a single asset developer that is looking to have a feature that a potential acquirer might find attractive, will agree to it then. But even in that limited circumstance, the buyback will be limited for a period of time. It is limited to only 1/3 buyback at most, and only on a change in control.
Why this discipline around drop-downs and buybacks? Our investment in a stream is not static. The value drivers on a stream are going to be long-term. They are going to happen over a very long period. Having drop-downs and buybacks, in our view, really limits that potential upside that the streamer will have. Let us walk through an example to illustrate the point here on drop-downs. On day one, we have two streams here. The gold stream is the Wheaton stream. It has our standard 1/3 drop-down, so we retain 2/3 of the original stream. The blue stream has a 1/4 of the original size of the stream. On day one, both those instruments look very similar. They look remarkably similar. They both have the same IRR. They both have the same upfront payment.
Year six, the stream with the smaller drop-down, of course, has a higher value still retained. In this particular example, it's 20% more value. What's interesting here is that if in year six gold prices increase, and this is the third set of bars over, and we have gold price doubling here. While it's still 20% more valuable, the gold stream, the smaller drop-down. That shaded area, the magnitude of the difference, has actually doubled in absolute quantum number. That's key here. That difference only widens if there's asset improvements. In this example, the mine life has been extended by 10 years, and that shaded area has grown. Again, key point here is that two streams, very similar on day one. As time goes by, as there's assets improvements, as metal price may increase, that difference in optionality, having that bigger tail bodes well for the stream.
Buybacks. Why don't we agree to buybacks? If there's one thing that can really limit your upside to the asset, it's having a fixed price or a fixed return buyback. Let's walk through an example here again. Gold stream, the Wheaton stream does not have a buyback. The blue stream has a buyback in year three. Again, day one, both look to be very similar. They both have the same IRR. They both have the same upfront payment. $100 goes in at the front end. The mine is built. At the start of production, this buyback comes up.
If there's been no change to the mine plan, and if gold price has stayed at $4,000, both streams have grown from $100 to be $126, which is just the future value of $100 at the assumed 8% IRR. That buyback won't get exercised. It's out of the money. Both streams will stay at $126. If gold price has doubled, by way of example, that buyback is very much in the money. It's $100 in the money. It will get exercised. By having the buyback, you've capped off that upside potential. Again, that difference is only magnified to the extent the asset is improved, whether through mine life expansions or otherwise. Here we've done a 10-year mine life expansion, and you can see that difference grows.
Actually, all we've done here really is financed a mine during what is arguably its most risky phase, which is its construction phase. You've taken all the risk of that mine, but you've captured upside if things go well. You've captured that, in this example, $152. Even in those limited circumstances that I said before, we do a buyback, the 1/3 buyback with a single asset developing company on a change of control. Even in those situations, we put a price adjustment clause in that tries to capture that value that you see in that second last bar.
Let's walk through an example, a real-life example, Cangrejos. Lumina Gold was acquired by CMOC Group. We had a stream in place which gave rise to a 1/3 buyback, as I mentioned. Had we just had the 15% rate of return on our investment, we put in $16 million of the total $300 million stream, we would have gotten a $4 million return on that. Because of this price participation clause, gold price went up 66% from the day we did the deal to the day the stream got bought back. That gave rise to an $82 million price adjustment for a total buyback price of $102 million. Why do we do that? Again, we've bought the gold. We want that price optionality. We want that exposure for our shareholders. We insist on having that price adjustment clause.
My last slide here is going to talk about the area of interest. When we negotiate a stream, we do try to get as big an area of interest as we can. On the screen here, you have Antamina as an example of that. As Neil said, we will factor in, on a discounted basis, we'll factor in exploration potential. We'll factor in blue sky potential even, so that if there is a discovery made in this expansive area, we'll participate as well as the mining operator. Again, throughout this entire presentation, as it's a recurring theme, our mandate is not to invest in today's mine plan. It's to provide that growth optionality, that price optionality for years to come. With that, I'll turn it over to Vince to talk about the flip side to that, when things don't go so well.
Thanks, guys. Thanks, Curt, and good morning. Protecting the downside is just as important as the upside. If your stream does not survive, you have no cash flows going forward, and that's why we look for a few core protections in our streams. The first is a parent guarantee, and 90% of our streams have this protection. A parent guarantee ensures the stream is backed by the full financial wherewithal of the counterparty, so you're not relying on a single asset or a shell company to deliver ounces to you. The second protection is security and limits on distributions and debt. This is especially important for non-investment grade rated counterparties, and 80% of our streams have these protections. The limits are really there for prevention to ensure the counterparty doesn't get over-levered or cash gets distributed out that they need for day-to-day needs.
A counterparty that's in distress is one that can't deliver metal to you. The security is there when prevention was not enough. It gives us a direct claim on the assets itself. It puts us in front of unsecured creditors and gives us a say on the outcome of the restructuring. The third protection is really against timing risk, and this is especially important for development staged assets, and 90% of our streams have these protections, and I'll come back to this in a bit. The fourth protection is enforceable delivery obligations, and nearly all our streams have these protections. Our agreements spell out exactly what metal is owed to us and how it gets delivered to us. Payable rate is a good example. Payable rate is something that's negotiated between the counterparty and the offtaker, and that's a negotiation that we're typically not a part of.
But to mitigate that risk, we fix the payable rate so that the economic outcome back to us is not impacted by a negotiation that we are not a part of. That might seem like a small detail, but over the life of the asset, that is meaningful value. A lot goes into putting together a well-protected stream, and the list on this slide gives you the broad categories of protections we look for. We really strive to tailor-make each stream to fit each asset and partner. You know what is consistent with all these protections is that it sits in the background and it does not interfere with the day-to-day operations of our partners. But if material risks do arise, these do emerge and protect us, and that is why partners have granted us these protections.
If they do run into difficulty, we have a long history of working alongside our partners to find solutions together with them, and that is why we are considered a partner of choice, like Neil has suggested earlier. I want to spend a bit of time on credit risk. This is often a risk that is overlooked in our space. If you look at the bond market, you would never value an investment-grade bond the same as you would a non-investment grade. But in our world, each and every single stream is valued using a flat 5% discount rate, irrespective of who the counterparty is. Consider two streams, exact same cash flows, but one has a much better creditworthy counterparty. So for that one, you use a 5% discount rate, and you come up with a $100 million stream value.
Then the second stream, it is a higher credit risk. So you add 4% to that discount rate, 9%. That $100 million value is now only $74 million. That is a 26% haircut, just factoring in credit risk. 75% of our production comes from investment grade rated counterparties, and that is a materially lower risk profile than the average peer. So that is why we spend so much time on credit risk, making sure we price it properly and structure it well to protect us. When you put that lens on, our portfolio should be valued meaningfully higher than the average peer.
Coming back to timing risk. This is a key risk for development staged assets, as I said earlier, and we work very hard to mitigate that risk. For one, we typically do not fund the majority of our upfront payment until permits are in hand, and that largely takes permitting risk off the table. When we do fund at construction, we only fund if the counterparty is fully financed and have all their permits, and we drip feed that over the time of the construction.
Our contracts also spell out exactly when completion of the project needs to be achieved. If it is not by a certain date, we get compensation, and that could be in various forms. It could be delay ounces that we get in the interim, or the stream percentage drop down the road gets pushed out, so we get more ounces for a longer period, or we get a portion of our upfront payment back. You contrast this to a stream with no protection where all your money goes out before permits. Every month of delay is an erosion to your return with no mechanism to get it back.
Think about a stream with a target IRR of 15%. A stream with no protection, if there is a 10-year delay, your 15% is now chopped in half to 7%. But a Wheaton stream with that same 10-year delay, you are still left with a solid double-digit IRR. The gap between these two lines is what we are talking about. Structure is not a legal formality. It comes back to returns to shareholders. The value of structure, like Curt said earlier, it does not leap off the page when you first announce a deal. It only shows up when things get difficult, and we have been there.
At San Dimas, the previous operator over-leveraged the company and became financially distressed. But because we had a senior ranking security position, we were able to restructure the stream, keep the mine going, and put it into the hands of a stronger mine operator. That allowed us to retain $1.3 billion of value compared to our original investment of $300 million. We invented streaming over 20 years ago. We have seen mine operators fail, run out of money, mines shut down. But each and every one of these lessons that we have learned, we have now applied to the new streams that we are putting together. This is what 20 years of experience gives us. We know what to ask for and what to put in our contracts to protect us.
To sum up, structure matters. This great analysis from a well-respected equity research analyst, I think gives us a glimpse as to what that might be worth. The IRR multiplier, it is what your today actual realized IRR is of a stream compared to what the original expected IRR was at the deal announcement date.
Our peers have achieved a 0.9x- 2.6x IRR multiplier. We have achieved 3.2x . We have tripled the original expected IRR. Of course, metal prices have something to do with this, but we have all had the same tailwind. But clearly, the outcomes are not the same. I like to think it comes back to how we pick our assets and how we structure our deals to minimize the downside risk and preserve the upside gain. I know it is very difficult to value what structure is. I totally get it from your side of the fence. These details are in these agreements, a lot of which you do not even have access to. There is no concrete number you can point to, like throughput or grade. There is no line item for structure.
Hopefully, our track record is evidence that structure does matter, and a portfolio put together the right way should be valued meaningfully higher than one that is not. Hopefully, this section has given you some insight into how we pick our assets and how we structure our deals to create long-term shareholder value. With that, I will pass it to Wes to talk about growth.
Perfect. Thanks, Vincent. Curt and Vincent just walked you through how we build a stream so it holds up over the long term. My job over the next 15 minutes really is to tell you what happens once the ink dries and how we stay close to these assets, and really why that closeness is what makes the growth you are about to see something you can really count on.
We will start with really a look back at the last few years because this is really what we are building on. This is our attributable gold production measured against the guidance range we published at the start of each year. In 2023, we came in inside the range. In 2024, we exceeded the range, and in 2025, we beat the top end of that again. This year, we are guiding 860,000 ox- 940,000 oz, and we are tracking inside that range.
2026 is weighted strongly towards that second half with approximately 46/54, and we were at 415,000 oz at the end of June. That is really driven by our partners' mine plans, the addition of the BHP stream on Antamina, and the ramp-up of several new assets. The important point here is that a streaming company's guidance is really the sum of our partners' mine plans. We do not operate these mines, and we are only ever as good as the access to the people who do. That access is not something you can write into a contract. You have to earn it. Which brings me to my next slide. Let me answer the obvious question. If we do not operate these mines, how do we get comfortable with the production we are forecasting? The answer is we are on-site with the operators year after year.
Over the past 12 months, we have been on site at 12 partner operations in eight countries across four continents. 92% of our attributable production came from operations we physically visited. I think it is important to be clear about what these site visits are. We are not there to audit or oversee our partners or tell them how to run their mines. They know their operations better than anyone. We know that we are there to understand the assets and spend the time with the people running them and learn from each other. What we have is a fairly unique vantage point. We see operations across four continents, so when we walk through a plant in Peru and see a challenge that we have seen addressed at a mine in Sweden, we can share that experience, and where it makes sense, connect those teams.
Just as importantly, we are constantly learning from our partners, carrying those lessons across our portfolio. Over time, these site visits have become much more than an opportunity for us to understand the assets. They have become a genuine exchange of ideas with our partners. This is one of the key reasons we are a partner of choice, and I will come back to the value of that at the end of my section. That partnership also extends beyond the mine site. Through our partner Community Investment Program, we invest alongside Vale, Antamina, Hudbay, and others in communities that host our operations. Patrick will talk more about that program later this morning. Importantly, we make those investments whether or not there is a transaction in front of us. All that engagement gives us a much deeper understanding of these assets and where they are going.
So when I talk about the growth profile in the next slide, it is grounded in what we are seeing at these operations and in the plans we are discussing directly with our partners. As you saw from Haytham earlier, this is our 50% growth, 806,000 oz to 1.2 million ounces by 2030. What I want to do is break down where that growth actually comes from. There are three buckets, 140,000 oz of that growth comes from assets that are already operating today, and these are producing mines that are expanding. 160,000 oz from assets that are under construction or ramping up with the majority of our funding already deployed. And about 90,000 oz from assets that are financed and progressing through development.
There are three things that this growth does not depend on. We do not need to deploy any incremental Wheaton capital to get to that 1.2 million ounces. We do not need exploration success to get there, and we are not dependent on any single permitting major milestone. Every ounce of that 50% comes from an asset we have already underwritten, and in most cases, already funded. That is an unusual position to be in for a growth company of any kind. 1.2 million ounces does not depend on us finding the next deal. It depends on our partners executing plans that are already underway. There is another important feature in Wheaton's growth. As the portfolio gets larger, it also becomes more diversified.
Today, Salobo represents about 37% of our production. By 2030, that falls to 26%, not because Salobo is producing less, but because the rest of the portfolio is growing around it. Antamina moves to about 12%, from 12% to 18%, and a much broader group of assets makes up the balance. I would frame that as resilience rather than scale.
By 2030, we have fewer single points of failure than we have today. For a business built on other people's operating performance, that matters even more than the headline production number. A number of assets are driving that growth, and after we break, we are going to hear from three of them, from people who actually run them. Montage on Koné, Vale on Salobo, which is our largest asset, and Hemlo Mining on Hemlo. I do not want to stand between you and that, so I have picked a couple of the largest assets that contribute to our growth that no partner is presenting today, which are Antamina and Blackwater.
Following the addition of the BHP stream earlier this year, Antamina is the single largest contributor to our near-term growth. Wheaton now receives 67.5% of the payable silver from Antamina. That is expected to contribute around 12 million ounces of silver annually for the next five years. I would argue that this transaction is some of the clearest evidence of the point I made earlier. BHP had every financing option available to them. They chose a stream, and they chose us. That is not a company solving a funding problem. It is a company choosing a partner, and I think that says a great deal about the streaming model and the relationships that we have built.
Behind the stream is one of the world's great copper zinc mines. Antamina is owned by BHP, Glencore, Teck, and Mitsubishi. Few mining assets anywhere have that depth of ownership behind them, and their long-term commitment is what matters to us at Antamina. It mitigates more than credit risk. It gives us confidence in the future of that asset.
I was at Antamina in June with our team, and the commitment you can see is on the ground. The owners are investing approximately $2 billion over the next several years, and the mine is permitted through 2036, with multiple expansion opportunities well beyond that current plan. What also strikes me every time I visit the site really is the sheer scale of the ore body and the opportunity that remains there. Antamina has a long history of growing through exploration, and when I spend time on site, you can really appreciate the quality and longevity of that asset.
Blackwater is a very different story and another important contributor to our growth. Blackwater first poured gold in January 2025, reached commercial production that May, and the next stages of expansion are already underway. That progression is significant. Throughput increases from 6 million tons per day this year to 8 million tons with Phase 1A, and ultimately to 21 million tons with Phase 2 in 2028, more than tripling throughput in just a few years. What makes that growth particularly compelling for Wheaton is how the expansion is being funded. The approximately CAD 1.6 billion program is fully funded by Artemis through their operating cash flow with no additional capital required from Wheaton. I visited Blackwater late last year and was impressed with how deliberately the mine was designed for growth.
Phase 2 is not a retrofit of the existing plant. It is a standalone second plant built alongside the operation, allowing Phase 1 to continue to run as the new capacity is brought online. It also means that what we have been able to see is that they are applying those lessons learned from Phase 1 directly to the Phase 2 design. Execution is progressing well, and Phase 1A is making excellent progress, and major long lead items for Phase 2 are already ordered. Most importantly, the operation has surpassed 8 million hours worked without a lost-time injury. What I like about the Blackwater story is how quickly it has evolved. Artemis was a developer when we first backed them, and today they are an operator, generating cash flow and funding that next stage of growth, and we are growing alongside them.
Everything I have shown you so far sits inside of our guidance. Everything on this slide sits above it, as Haytham mentioned earlier. There is a number of assets that are not conceptual opportunities. This is work in progress in our portfolio. At Salobo, Vale is advancing the coarse particle flotation and further de-bottlenecking opportunities, which could increase the throughput beyond its current capacity. At Kurmuk, Allied is already looking beyond the 6 million ton design, with the potential to meaningfully increase throughput. At Fenix, Rio2 is studying access to additional water, which will ultimately allow them to expand from 20,000 tons a day up to as much as 80,000 tons a day. At Goose, B2Gold is looking to the addition of a SAG mill, which could further increase throughput there as well.
We also have further production from Jervois, which could contribute up to 15,000 gold- equivalent ounces by 2030, and Toropa ru, which could add another 25,000 oz if it advances. None of that is in the current 1.2 million forecast. But what we can see is taking shape today. We see the studies, we see the expansion plans. We are on-site with the teams working through them, and in many cases, we are part of those conversations years before the additional production shows up in our guidance. That is the value of the access and engagement that I described earlier, and that is what being a partner of choice is actually worth, measured in ounces.
Which brings me where I want to finish, and to the slide that brings really the whole morning together. You have seen this statistic from both Neil and from Haytham earlier, and really you have heard from four parts of the business today, and I want to pull that together before we break here. Haytham really opened with the strength of the streaming model and the growth it can deliver. Neil showed you where those deals actually come from. Curt and Vincent showed you how we structure these transactions to create value through the cycle, and I have spent the last 15 minutes or so on what happens in the years after that initial investment is made.
Those are different parts of the business, and they are built on the same foundation, the relationships that really we build with our partners. This chart really is the evidence of that. More than 70% of the transactions since 2014 are with counterparties that we have worked with before. Not a marketing statistic. It really is people choosing to work with us a second and a third time, and they had lots of other options in the market open to them. Providing capital really is only the beginning. In many ways, writing the check is the easy part. What really distinguishes us is the 10, 15, 20 years that come after that.
It is stay engaged as these assets change. It is finding ways to create value beyond the original transaction, and it is investing alongside our partners in their communities, and it is having technical people who know the assets and know the people running them. None of that is contractual, but all of it is why partners choose to work with us again, and it is why BHP, when they had the entire financing market available to them, chose to stream and chose to work with us. That is what being a partner of choice means to us, and I think the best evidence of that is what we have got coming next.
You have kind of heard our view on these assets. After the break, you are going to hear directly from the people that actually run them. Three of our partners have agreed to present their own assets here today in their own words. They know these mines far better than I ever will, and the fact that they are willing to speak directly to our shareholders really about their operations, about their plans for the future, really says a lot about those relationships, really more than I ever could. Before that, we are going to take a short break here. So we have got about five minutes that we are going to just step away, and when I come back, Haytham is going to come and introduce the first presenter. Thank you.
[Break]
Everyone, if we could ask you to find your seats, we will be kicking off in just a moment.
If you could all take your seats now, that would be great. Thank you. Our next presenter will be one of our newer partners, Martino De Ciccio from Montage Gold, CEO of Montage Gold. He unfortunately could not be here in person because he is building a mine, so we understand that. But he has recorded a video, and he will be available for questions right after the video. Just to give you a bit of background, it is a recent addition to our portfolio. This is one of those opportunities where we had the ability to fund the majority of the funding on this, and we were very excited to do so. Since they have started in Côte d'Ivoire, they have demonstrated some incredible exploration upside and also some strong potential for production growth. I am sure Martino will be talking more about that.
With that, we'll start the video and then turn it over to Martino after.
Hi, everyone. I'm Martino De Ciccio, CEO of Montage Gold. As a quick overview of Montage, construction is nearing completion at our Koné project in Côte d'Ivoire, on which Wheaton has a gold stream. In fact, in order to execute on our strategy of creating a multi-asset premier African gold producer, we're also working on fast-tracking our Didievi project. In parallel, we're also focused on sourcing the next project organically through our ability to stake and explore grounds. Our recent success at Wendé is a great example of that. At Montage, as you can see, we have been rapidly executing on our strategy. In fact, it's now been just over two and a half years on the job, and it's super exciting to be so close to the first gold pour.
The reason we were so keen to participate in this event, in whatever shape or form, is to take the opportunity to highlight the collective effort which underpins our rapid execution. All our success would not be possible without the relentless dedication of our employees, our stakeholders, suppliers, contractors, and of course, our financial partners such as Wheaton Precious Metals. By way of background, we had over 16 offers to fund ourselves, so needless to say that it was a competitive process. Beyond IRR calculations and NPV per share scenarios, and trust me, we did tons of those, what ultimately led us to partner with Wheaton was the innovative stream features, which I'll detail later, and the softer aspects.
As a starter, when we were just starting our discussions and I presented our suggested timetable to Haytham and Curt, they paused, realized that we were serious, and said, "Okay, well, how quick can we get to site so we can work on due diligence in parallel to negotiating terms?" They also mentioned that they'll never get in the way of a team that wants to execute quickly, and to this day, that statement remains true. In fact, this is probably a right time to squeeze in a thanks or maybe a sorry to the Wheaton team for all the late nights, weekend, and holiday work, and for the quick turnaround requirements. For us, a true partnership means that the relation is important for both sides and that we have a shared culture.
Wheaton is, of course, our largest financier, but Koné represents Wheaton's largest investment in Africa and one of the largest contributors to its five-year growth profile. Let me dig a little bit deeper into why both we and Wheaton chose West Africa as a region and the Koné project. For me, the stat that sums it up well is the fact that West Africa is now the number one gold-producing region globally. Just let that sink in a bit. Last year, 16 million ounces were produced in the region, surpassing China, Russia, and Australia. That is because production is up circa 400% in the last decade. I think that will keep going at the same pace because of two important factors. First, because over 70 million ounces have been discovered in the region since 2010. By the way, Côte d'Ivoire was the largest contributor.
Second, because on average in West Africa, it takes about 10 years to go from first discovery to production, which is the quickest globally. I like to think that my colleagues and I actually have something to contribute to those stats, as we have spent most of our careers developing gold projects in West Africa. For the most of us, Koné will mark the fifth mine we built in the region, three of which in Côte d'Ivoire. Koné, by the way, will be the ninth mine in Côte d'Ivoire, whereas when I started my career, we had the only gold mine in the country. I was actively trying to convince investors to come to Côte d'Ivoire. Another impressive stat is that the team we have in Montage has been directly responsible for 20 million ounces of discoveries in the region over the last 15 years.
In addition to the geological potential, what drew us to Côte d'Ivoire is its diversified economy, which underpins the fact that it has one of the highest credit ratings in Africa. That is very important because if a country itself is investable, it means that companies like ourselves can more easily obtain financing for projects. In addition, Côte d'Ivoire has spent the last 20 years building its infrastructure. You can see it now with the quality of its ports, roads, and the electric grid. Lastly, the mining code has been stable and the country is safe. All these factors make a difference.
Now, let us talk a little bit about our Koné project. First off, its location is great. It has three key ingredients: strong geological potential, good infrastructure, and available human capital. On the geology side, our project is located where three mineralized trends converge. That is why we have so many deposits and targets. As for infrastructure, we are 20 km away from the high-voltage power line and a sealed road that goes straight to site. Of course, in order to build, you need people in proximity. We now have over 3,600 people on site. We are proud to say that over 95% are nationals, thanks to our training programs.
Not sure if you can grasp this next stat, but we have already worked over 13 million hours on site. That might be enough to build two or three smaller projects. In fact, Koné will be one of the largest mills in the region with a capacity of over 11 million tons per year. Today, it is probably one of the largest mines being built globally and by far the largest in a single asset company. I don't think people fully understand the scale of the operation until they come to site. The Wheaton team are, of course, well aware, given they have routinely visited the site. It's actually awesome when they come because they end up being great spokespersons for the asset to the investment community.
On the construction site, as I mentioned earlier, we have never been so close to the first gold pour. All major processing infrastructure necessary for the oxide circuit have been completed, including the TSF and the water storage facilities. The oxide sizer, the ball mill, classification areas, CIL tanks, and the gold room are all done. We were connected to the grid earlier this summer, and we began mining activities last month.
Lastly, we're well progressed on commissioning activities. In fact, initially, we were saying the first gold pour would be by Q2 2027, then we brought it forward to late Q4 2026 through the oxide startup, and within the last published project update, we reiterated that production should start within the fourth quarter. Now, I'm not sure how much production Wheaton puts into their 2026 guide. We can start contributing sooner than later. Talking about our production profile, the last published numbers are based on the 2024 feasibility study. There were only two deposits in that study, which was robust enough for us to make our construction decision and for Wheaton to make their investment decision. That gold production profile is expected to materially improve because we now have 12 deposits rather than two.
The resource base has significantly grown as we started with 5 million ounces, and now it's not so difficult to see how this can potentially attain a 10 million ounce endowment. Today, we have 6.3 million ounces of indicated resources and 2 million ounces of inferred resources. But most importantly, all the new discoveries made are at least 85% higher grade compared to the initial Koné grade. This means that we can displace lower grade material to boost production from the onset. We've now drilled more than 340,000 meters since the 2024 feasibility study was published, and we have about 130,000 meters ongoing for this year. This is why we were so eager to publish a new life of mine plan once the drilling program wraps up.
It's quite rare to be able to explore while building, and thanks to the Wheaton stream put in place, we're all incentivized to make the asset even better. In contrast, traditional debt would have earmarked every dollar for the build and restricted our ability to aggressively explore to after the first gold pour. In our current setup, if we find and produce higher grade ounces up front, then our production goes up, so we benefit, but it also means that Wheaton get their ounces quicker and hence boost their IRR. Given the strong exploration potential we saw in the asset and the fact we were just starting on it, a unique feature of the stream is that the area of interest is limited to only the two deposits that were in the study, plus 500 meters.
So we're able to keep most of the exploration upside as we now have those 12 deposits. When I take a step back and reflect on everything we've accomplished thus far, what strikes me the most is the legacy we will leave behind and the positive social and economic impact we are already having on thousands of people near our mine. In fact, given our shared values, we look forward to partnering with Wheaton on joint initiatives that will continue to make a real difference. To conclude, I'd like to thank the Wheaton team for the invitation to present and their continued support. Given the rapid progress achieved, we're confident that we'll be able to quickly unlock value for Wheaton and for all our other stakeholders as we continue to execute on our goal of creating a premier African gold producer.
Thank you, Martino, for that video. We really appreciate it. You're live here in the room in Toronto, so anyone here can go ahead in the audience and ask a question. We'll bring the microphone around. For those on the webcast, you're welcome to type into the box, and we'll read it out in the room. But I'll turn it over to live audience here. If anyone has a question, just raise your hand. Thanks, Derick.
Hi, Martino. Derick Ma from TD Cowen. Thanks for making the time. I want to talk about the exploration potential that you've highlighted in the video, but also the potential for expansions at the operations as you look to ramp up Koné.
Great. Well, first off, again, thanks for the opportunity to the Wheaton team to present today, and apologies for not being able to make it in person. On the exploration side, as you saw in the video, we're very excited with what we've done so far this year. And since we've joined, the resource has grown from 5 million ounces to 8.3 million ounces. But going back to all those ounces found, they're all higher grade, at least 85%. So this allows us to push out lower grade material, so push out 0.6 g and replace that with 1 g and above. In fact, some of the deposits being found are closer to 2 g. So we're very excited with that. We'll publish a new mine plan earlier next year to be able to show how those deposits are being converted.
So what we see today is the ability to continue to grow the current deposits found. We are working on Gbongogo Main, and Koban, but also finding new deposits. On the property, there are over 50 targets that have been identified. So far, we have drilled half of them, and they all came back with high-grade intercepts. Our goal in order to be very careful how we allocate our exploration dollars has been drill out a starter resource. It does not matter how big or small, it is more a question of assessing the grade profile. Based on knowing the grade and a few step-out holes we have done, we have been able to see how we prioritize the exploration efforts.
Today, out of the 12, we really only drilled out about four or five of them, did infill and then step out, and the other ones remain to be done. That is why when I go back to some of the comments made in the video, it is not so difficult now to see how this can become a 10 million ounce endowment. As for expansions, look, it is still early days, I think, to talk about expansions because we have to see how the mill performs. Given the changes we have done in the flow sheet prior to launching construction, we would expect to be able to push more tons in the mill than the nameplate suggests.
Thanks, Martino. Just one that came on online is, and you just said it is too early to talk about expansion, so maybe this is not as relevant, but the question was, will you be able to fund future expansions through cash flow from ops, or do you see a need for any additional funding externally?
Our priority, once we get into production, is to look to fast-track the next development, which is our Didievi project, also in Côte d'Ivoire that came through the African Gold transaction. Given the strong returns and the way the stream has been put in place allows us to be able to build up a balance sheet and be able to fund our organic growth. This is obviously the preference for us.
Congratulations, Martino, on getting the production profile coming up sooner than previously expected. Just wanted to ask, in terms of the higher grades that you're seeing, if you were to be able to bring them up to the front of the mine plan, first of all, in terms of recoveries, how do you see the recoveries from the higher grade, which will be coming in replacing the low grade? How could that change the production profile at the beginning of the mine plan?
On the recovery rates, we have no nasties in our ore, and given the higher grade deposits, we expect slightly higher recovery rates in some of those higher grade satellites than on Koné itself, which is low grade, but obviously low strip. Our goal, rather than just boosting production in the first year, then having a declining production profile, our goal is to increase production in plateaus. We're targeting to lock in a first production profile of at least 350,000 oz plus over 10 years, and then look at how we bring forward production for the first five years to be able to, again, plateau that even higher.
Thank you.
Hi, Martino. This is Larry Liu from CIBC Capital Markets. I guess since we are at the Wheaton Precious Metals Investor Day, can you talk about how you feel Wheaton's different from its peers as a streamer's perspective? You did mention earlier this is one of the largest investment for Wheaton Precious Metals, as well as Africa. What made you think they're a great partner in this case, and what made them stand out?
Great. I guess for us it was two factors, if not three. You have to be competitive on a cost of capital perspective, and that goes without saying. But given the many offers we had, all the cost of capitals end up being fairly similar. Then you have to look at the softer aspects, which is speed of execution. As I mentioned in the video, the Wheaton team were very active, and that's allowed us to be able to fast-track the development of Koné. In addition, where it was very different was, this was essentially almost a fully funded deal, one-shop with Wheaton. Again, simplicity sometimes is better and allows you to go more quickly. After that, the Wheaton team have been very available and reactive.
I think when you're looking to build a business almost from scratch, as what we did, you want to surround yourself with the right partners that you're able to build a multi-asset business off of. On the shareholder side, I couldn't think of better shareholders, with the key shareholder being the Lundin family. Then we've surrounded ourselves with robust financial partners that are able to continue to support us as we look to grow the business.
Just scanning the room here for any final questions, but I think we might be covered. Thank you so much, Martino, for attending and for sending through the video. We appreciate the partnership.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next presenter will be Alfredo Santana, COO of North Atlantic Operations for Vale Base Metals. Salobo is one of the most important projects in our portfolio. I will also say Salobo is the largest copper project ever discovered in Brazil. Vale has been an incredible partner in the fact that we have done three different streams with Vale just on Salobo alone. That demonstrates the strong relationship that the team has built there. With that, I will hand it over to Alfredo Santana, who is going to be joining us by video. Just having some audio difficulties hearing you, Alfredo.
I can hear you well. Can you hear me?
Perfect. There you go. Now we can hear you. Thank you.
Can you hear me well?
Yes.
Okay.
Alfredo, we have gone ahead and done the introduction already, so please feel free to start.
Okay. I hope you guys are hearing me well, and good morning and good afternoon to everyone. I am excited to be joining you at the Wheaton Precious Metals Investor Day again this year. Haytham, thank you for inviting us. It will be a pleasure to take some time to get you guys through everything that is going on in VBM, and very exciting news to everyone, right? Just a quick, I do not know if my slides are moving properly here. Just a second. Yeah. Just acknowledge our standard disclaimer. I would like to start saying that Vale has had a long and trusted relationship with Wheaton, and I really would like to thank the Wheaton team, and Haytham, for the opportunity to present today for all of you.
As I was just introduced, my name is Alfredo Santana. I am the COO of Vale Base Metals, and I would also like to acknowledge Wheaton for the recent investment in Salobo CPF project that I am going to talk a little bit in more detail further down the road, and which is amazing to all of us. This collaboration demonstrates the strong relationship we have that is shared across Salobo, Voisey's Bay, and Sudbury, focused on maximizing the value of these important assets. I will provide more detail on each of these assets during my presentation, but first, let me provide a brief update of Vale Base Metals. VBM is extremely well-placed for growing value, as we probably are all in. Our portfolio of large, high-quality, vertically integrated assets and strategically located to deliver critical minerals to diverse customer base.
Our copper, nickel, cobalt growth opportunities are positioned well to take advantage of the growing demand for these commodities. We have set the framework to grow value based on optimizing risk in a responsible way, and we have rejuvenated our culture. Recently, we made a real change in our organization, empowering our people to take an owner's mindset with this decentralized model. We push the decision-making as close as possible to the assets, which is really the X- factor of our success. I think it's very clear that we have been demonstrating this, and quarter by quarter, we have delivered consistent and improved performance. There is so much potential here, to provide critical minerals to the world with the needs today and in the future. We're very, very happy to be part of this in how we position today. It's a great value.
If you look back to our first half of 2026, you can see very, very strong results. For the first half of 2026, we have delivered $2.5 billion in EBITDA and over $0.5 billion in free cash flow. We also have a very low net debt, and our balance sheet is quite strong. Operationally, we are also delivering strong results across the whole portfolio, right? Moving forward with a bit more detail on our, I would say, operational performance and how confident we are that we're going to deliver what we committed to. You saw this outstanding operational performance has led to growing volumes and lower costs. In July, we lifted the lower end of our production guidance range for both copper and nickel, demonstrating the confidence we have in our performance this year.
We also lowered our all-in cost guidance for both copper and nickel, reflect the strong operational performance and favorable commodity price environment, despite the inflationary pressure being experienced across the whole sector, right? If you do another step right now, I would like to speak more about our operational performance. In VBM, I'm leading the operational team in very clear pillars, with very clear pillars. These are the three pillars we're always talking about, safety first, stable and capable, and reliable best in class. In my last presentation in the VBM day in March, I outlined our ambition to transform Vale Base Metals into a high-performing, integrated operating system, delivering safe, reliable, repeatable results. What gives me the confidence today is not only the results we are seeing, but how they are being achieved.
Our operating model is producing similar outcomes across different assets, geographies, commodities, and everything you see in the next slide shows the system is scaling up quite quickly. Let me start with safety. Safety remains our top priority and is the foundation of everything else. Sadly, an employee of one of our contractors passed away last month following an incident in Sossego mining complex in Canaã dos Carajás. The incident remains under investigation, and we continue to support the relevant process while reinforcing the critical controls across our operations. We continue to strengthen our leadership in the field and confirm our critical controls integrity, and are also reinforcing our chronic and ease principles to all our people. Unfortunately, we had this incident with one of our contractors, but this does not change anything on how we look at safety.
This is the foundation of everything we do. We will learn from what happened and move forward and get even stronger moving forward. If you move to Salobo right now, I think this is the biggest interest of the audience. Salobo is Vale Base Metals' flagship copper operation, representing the largest copper mine in Brazil and the second-largest iron oxide copper gold deposit globally. There has been a lot of investment in Salobo in recent years. I am extremely proud of the outstanding results that we are seeing from Salobo with Schettino and his team. With an annualized run rate ore milled in the first half of this year striking 36 million tons, which is the nominal capacity of our system there, Salobo One and Salobo Two and Salobo Three, it has been the highest output ever.
With the successful completion of CPF project, this asset could reach 42 million tons per year by 2029 and beyond. We are boosting our productivity and maintaining our high focus on preventive maintenance at the plant. Today, we are the benchmark of productivity of electrical excavators in Brazil, and we are pushing all the boundaries with extremely focus on safety and productivity. We are also pushing ahead with autonomous fleets, and we are increasing our mine productivity. We are upgrading our conveyor belt systems to over 5,000 tons per hour to raise the capacity and dilute our costs. There is a lot more other improvements that we are focusing on Salobo One and Salobo Two as well. The main point here is not only that Salobo is having a strong year, we are building a better asset with the best-in-class performance also in the future.
I am extremely pleased and proud of the results that we are seeing out of Sabolo. If you look at the coarse particle flotation, that is our critical project in Salobo right now. I would say that the coarse particle flotation, or CPF as we call, is a process that removes waste rock earlier in the process plant before fine grinding, therefore, using less energy grinding waste rock unnecessarily. By floating copper from coarser material, and our tests in Salobo have shown that the material that we have in Salobo is extremely good for this type of process. CPF removes about 30% of the waste upfront. This frees up capacity downstream in the chain, right? What that means in the end, we expect that CPF will generate around 30,000 tons per year of additional copper production and 15,000 oz of gold per year as well.
At the same time, reducing specific energy consumption by around 10%. This is a great example of low capital intensity brownfield growth. We announced the approval of this project last month, which includes optimized total CapEx and an accelerated project start-up in the first half of 2028. We really appreciate Wheaton's support for this project, which reflects the strength of our longstanding relationship and shared confidence in the project, right? Let me move up to Canada right now with our Sudbury and Voisey's Bay operations. Sudbury, we have mined for more than a century, as you know, and it remains one of the most capital-efficient growth opportunities in our portfolio. There is still significant value to unlock through improved underground productivity with our main focus, mill de-bottlenecking and a further growth in our mineral endowment.
The good news here is at Clarabelle Mill, the long-term opportunity is to reach 9 million tons per year of throughput and the expansion is being implemented in phases. Phase 1 and Phase 2, it will be done this year. Phase 1 we just completed last June, and Phase 2 will be done by October. This will take us towards 6million tons- 7 million tons per year by 2028. In fact, we are expecting right now in 2026 to be around 5.5million tons- 6 million tons in 2026 out of Clarabelle Mill, which is incredible results comparing on where we are coming from. This make us really, really proud. This incremental throughput at very low capital intensity with immediate margin benefits, the higher value feeds, with external feed and as an optional lever, not a dependency.
If you go to Voisey's Bay, Voisey's Bay is one of the best examples of our transformation in action. The underground ramp-up is largely complete and we are now seeing the benefits of it. Mining rates or availability and operational consistency have all improved significantly. Voisey's Bay will deliver its outstanding results in 2026 and move to around 2.8 million tons per year. That is their nominal capacity, while we prepare for the next step toward 3.8 million tons in the very near future. These gains are being driven by predictive monitoring, tele-remote mining, continuous improvement, and stronger operating discipline. Overall, the results that we have seen across the board with all our assets are quite outstanding and following a basic standard focus on safety, stability, capability and pushing our boundaries to be best-in-class operator.
If you look at our roadmap from now to 2035, I think this was well public to this point. We have one of the world's strongest copper growth story, supported by productivity bottlenecking and de- bottlenecking pipeline. Low risk, I would say brownfield opportunities, and we are confident in our pathway to 700,000 tons of copper by 2035. Innovation and exploration are key levers here, and innovation will enable us to replicate the good results to different operations just like CPF and de-bottleneck. That's the focus of our R&D investments. If we go to do a summary of everything that I said here, and I will open up for Q&A. The accelerated transformation delivers consistent performance and positions VBM for growth. We have a diversified and resilient portfolio with polymetallic exposure, vertically integrated strategic supplier that we are, and we have a portfolio reset. Safe and consistent performance.
We have a strong team. The company has done a huge transformation in the last two years. We are safe at delivering our production, and our unit cost outcomes are just showing improvements year-over-year. In the end, we are a low risk and high return growth. We have a refreshed approach to planning project evaluation and licensing. Copper growth pipeline, one of the lowest cost and higher return in the industry. Our exploration program with highly prospective and growing resource, and we are self-funded, supported by the net debt EBITDA below 1x. In the end, we are seeing that as VBM, we are very well positioned to the future ahead of us, and we are demonstrating this quarter by quarter.
I will leave here with you, and I just would like again to thank you for the opportunity to be here today and talk with you a little bit about what we are doing in VBM. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Alfredo. Much appreciated. I'll turn it to the room if anyone has a question.
[Non-English content] Alfredo. It's John Tumazos. Does the 700,000 ton 2035 guidance include Hu'u? Or what other projects?
No, the 700,000 tons, it basically include all our organic projects that we have in our pipeline. And the growth is basically focused on Carajás in Brazil. Hu'u is not part of this.
For Hu'u to proceed, will the tailings disposal be on land or marine, or has not been decided?
There's been a discussion around tailings, but it has not been decided yet. We're still in a feasibility phase of the project at this point.
Is the concept for Hu'u 100,000 tons a day or 200,000 tons or 300,000 tons? Big picture.
I'm sorry, but I don't know this answer for you right now. I can check it out and revert it back to the team here with Wheaton, and they can give that to you, if that's okay.
Thank you very much. I'm sorry I'm too interested too fast.
No, that's fine. No problem. Thank you for your questions.
Thanks, Alfredo. Derick Ma from TD Cowen. I have a question on Salobo. How is the coarse particle flotation technology working right now, and is there a potential to apply that to Salobo One and Salobo Two as well? A follow-on on that is, does CPF reduce the need for another processing facility at Salobo, call it Salobo Four?
Yeah, that's a very good question. We decided to do the coarse particle flotation in Salobo Three right now because this is a new technology as well. We saw in our tests in our pilot plants. We built a pilot plant in Carajás, in Sossego, and the results are incredibly good at this point. The idea is to start out with Salobo Three, and definitely we will analyze if there is other places, not only in Salobo One and Salobo Two, but maybe Voisey's Bay, for example, that this technology would be applicable. This is part of our process in R&D. But at this very moment, we are also doing some improvement work in Salobo One and Salobo Two that will help us to improve the productivity at that plant.
In terms of if this will, I would say, replace another expansion of Salobo that we usually call in the past Salobo Four, I cannot tell you at this point that it will, because our resource and endowment in Salobo, it is abundant. At this very moment, we want to move ahead with Salobo Three, proving the technology, then decide when and how we are going to apply this in other projects moving forward. We are very confident that we are going to see great results out of Salobo Three with CPF.
Any final questions from the room?
Alfredo, Brian MacArthur, Raymond James. Since you mentioned CPF for Voisey's Bay, if you go ahead with that, do you need to change anything at Long Harbour, or would you just be able to handle everything at Long Harbour? Do you have to integrate stuff back to Sudbury, meaning, is there a lot of other capital?
No. I think today we have enough space. Our intention, and we are moving ahead with these studies and the feasibility study, that we want to push Voisey's Bay to at least 3.8 million tons per year, which will allow us to feed Long Harbour 100% with Voisey's Bay. Today, Long Harbour has a nominal capacity of 50,000 tons per year. With Voisey's Bay, 2.8 million tons per year, we are being able to feed Long Harbour about 45,000- 46,000 tons per year. The idea is to push Voisey's Bay even further because we know that we have a huge potential in Voisey's Bay to keep increasing the life of the mine, and have that facility delivering 3.8 million tons per year at minimum in the near future. I hope I answered your question.
Hi, Alfredo. This is David Ho from BMO. I have a question on the Clarabelle Mill expansion, the 8.5 million- 9 million tons a year envisioned for the 2030 plus period.
Yeah.
What is driving that? Do you have new sources of ore coming in from your own mines, or is it to cater for some of those off takes I believe you have in the region?
No, it's coming along with our long-term planning. We are investing in developing the mines in Sudbury and bringing back the production that we have over there. There are several projects in our pipeline for Sudbury as well to increase our own production in the next 5- 10 years. With that, we will need to expand Clarabelle Mill as we go. Just for you to have an idea, 3, 4 years ago, we were running Clarabelle Mill in about 3.5 million tons per year. This year we will be around 5.5 million- 6 million tons in 2026. This is incredible improvement in a very short period of time and with a low-intensity capital allocation to this project. Clarabelle Mill now will be able to, in 2028, be delivering around 7 million tons per year.
As we move with our life of business plan expansion, our goal is to bring the capacity of the mill up to 9 million tons.
Yeah, just to follow up on that, how much of that capacity is for your own ore relative to what is available for your off takes? Just trying to get a sense of the distribution.
Oh, no, yes. I do not have right on top of my head here what is going to be the percentage close to 2030, but definitely we are improving our own production, and we are going to focus on filling this capacity majoritarily with our own production. But that will be some room for external feed still.
Thank you.
Okay.
All right. I think that is it for questions for Alfredo. Alfredo, thanks again so much for being here late in the evening in London. We appreciate it greatly. Have a good night.
Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
Our third and final presentation today will be Hemlo Mining and CEO, as well as the CFO and the chairman here today, but I think it's just one of them that's going to present. We've got Jon Awde, we've got Jon Case here as well. With that, Hemlo Mining has been one of our recent additions, where we actually helped a transaction and acquire basically an asset, which was a very mature asset, and the team at Hemlo has done an incredible job of breathing new life into a mature asset. With that, I'll introduce Jason Kosec.
Got to slightly adjust this microphone, Haytham. Thank you all for joining. Really appreciate it, and a special thanks to the Wheaton team. Deals of this size don't happen without full alignment. For people in the audience, this was the largest financing ever done by a shell company. It was the largest financing done ever on the TSX Venture. The Wheaton team was about a third of the financing. Right from day one, there was complete alignment from a strategy, a vision, and the potential value to be unlocked from this iconic asset. With that, Haytham, thank you very much for your continued support and to the entire Wheaton team.
I will be making forward-looking statements, so I will direct everyone to our disclaimer on the company's website. Just a quick corporate snapshot. Roughly sitting around a $2.2 billion-$2.4 billion market cap company. A very healthy balance sheet of around $130 million in cash. Long-term debt of $150 million, so net debt position around $20 million. After the first quarter of ownership, we paid down $75 million on a revolving credit facility, reducing that balance to nil. We have $100 million capacity on that. A very strong shareholder base from the likes of Orion, Wheaton, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price. Tremendous street coverage with an average target price of around $10.
Hemlo is an iconic Canadian asset, hence why we kept the name. It has been in production for over 40 years, and that significantly de-risks our ramp-up. We know what the metallurgy is. We know what the resource conversion is. We know what the geotechnical was. So it significantly de-risks our ramp-up production. Over that 40-year history, Hemlo has produced over 25 million ounces of gold. At its peak, it was 25% of Canada's gold production and about 3% of Canada's GDP.
It sits 30 km east of the town of Marathon, right off the Trans-Canada Highway. Currently, we are sitting at about 5.7 million ounces in resources and reserves. In the first half of this year, we did about 60,000 oz of attributable production for an average AISC of around $2,157. What we are showing you here in the black bars is the current technical report that Barrick commissioned. It was filed under us. Obviously, that puts a base of value in what we were looking at. But through a tremendous amount of due diligence, both from the Wheaton side, from our side, we are very technically focused people. I am a structural geologist. We saw a tremendous amount of value to be unlocked by maximizing a very underutilized infrastructure.
That is what we are showing you with the dotted bars is a production ramp-up over the next two to three years to about 6,000 tons per day. The current study shows an average annual production of 138,000 oz. Obviously, we strongly believe we can do significantly better than that, or else we would not have acquired the asset. Our growth strategy is clear. One of our biggest strategic assets that we have here at Hemlo is our mill. The mill's permitted capacity is 13,500 tons. The mill nameplate capacity is 10,000 tons. So we have broken up our growth strategy into three clear phases. We are starting at 3,800 tons per day right now. That is what we average in the first half. Phase 1 is to 4,800 tons per day. Phase 2 is to 6,000 tons per day.
That can be achieved solely from our underground operation, and I will get more into the underground infrastructure in a subsequent slide. The growth from 6,0`00 tons to 10,000 tons is really predicated around a trade-off study that we are currently conducting. Whether we open the open pit back up and do a pushback or whether we take those ounces from underground in a bulk mining scenario, that work is being conducted right now. All that is around a foundation around a significant resource and reserve endowment. We most recently just put out our updated MRE within the first six months of ownership, growing the resources in the M&I category by 34%. So this is the optionality that the Wheaton team was talking about the exploration potential of these assets and the investments that they make.
Right now, we've conducted one of the largest drill programs globally for a single asset of 130 km of drilling. It's significantly more than Barrick ever did. To put it in perspective, Barrick was drilling about 10,000 meters a year. We have multiple regional targets in a district scale, 44,000 hectare land package in one of the most prolific greenstone belts in Canada. What we're showing you here is a long section of the mine and a significantly underutilized underground infrastructure that complements the mill. We've broken out each zone here into nine mining zones. Each zone is responsible for production, their services, their pace, and backfill. Within those mining zones, there's multiple mining fronts, and what that allows us to do is drive a much higher productivity, which will equate to a much lower unit operating cost to support a lower grade cut off.
You don't see the same type of margin compression as you would elsewhere when you lower our cut off. You have to remember about 75%-80% of our costs are fixed costs here at Hemlo. Cranking more tons is the easiest way to lower our cost profile, giving the latent infrastructure that's at site. We have a shaft that's sitting at, well, at 1.3 km depth. That hoist can do 6,000 ore tons. We have a ramp that we just connected to the bottom of the pit that can handle about 4,000 ore tons per day. You could be pulling 10,000 tons a day out of this underground infrastructure and plenty of underground crushing capacity. There's a few near-term opportunities and de-bottlenecking efforts that we're working through to maximize this production profile.
One of them would be switching the mining sequencing from a top-down approach to a bottom-up approach. What's the significance of that? The significance of that is a significantly reduced amount of waste being hoisted to surface to lower your cost profile and breaking through to the next level to keep more of that waste underground. The second opportunity, as I highlighted earlier, is our portal haulage. The portal is not being utilized right now, and as I highlighted earlier, it's about 4,000 tons per day of ore capacity. There's a number of additional mining areas for our short-term opportunities that are these bulk tonnage, highly productive stopes. We're looking at an Avoca mining method. We're doing two test stopes this year, and these are big stopes. These are 70,000-90,000 ton stopes at around 2 grams. Very similar to what you see at Goldex and Young-Davidson.
More notably, which has incurred a slight delay, is our Alimak area. These are very high tonnage to development ratio opportunities. I thought it would be important just to show you where we were sitting last year when Wheaton put in their $300 million gold stream to where we've gone in 2026 and where we see the future opportunities. What we're showing you in teal is the 2025 reserves. In red, the 2026 reserves, and then in pink, the growth potential that we'll be unlocking over the coming years. Again, to highlight our growth program with our drilling, this is the foundation for our updated technical study that we'll disclose next year in the second half of 2027. A big focus is on our resource to reserve conversion that can build the foundation for that updated technical study and life of mine plan.
There's a big component of growth drilling, which is really demonstrating our geological view when we originally looked at the asset, with multiple parallel zones that have not been exploited in previous years. You have to remember, the first 17 million ounces that were taken out of Hemlo, the average gold price was $350 an ounce . Yes, they knew about these parallel zones, but when you see in the image on the bottom right there, when you have 20 meters of half an ounce, you're not going to go chase 10 meters of 5 grams. Now, just to really take a step back and look at the regional potential. Hemlo has been thought about, and people have tried to put a genetic model around Hemlo, and it's been up for debate for 40 plus years.
We had John and Dick Sillitoe, both brilliant minds, one an orogenic mine, one a porphyry mine, to really battle it out at site and understand the genetic model. Why that's important is we need to understand the fundamentals to go look for another Hemlo. The chances in an Archean greenstone belt to have a one-off 35 million ouncer is extremely rare. Lo and behold, they came to an agreement by cross-cutting relationships in geochemistry that this is indeed an Archean porphyry system. The porphyry is dated at 2,693. What we're highlighting here is the targets that we're slowly evaluating and doing our data compilation that we will test in the years to come. Things that are quite exciting are the Beggs Lake, Page Lake, Wire Lake, and lo and behold, Porphyry Lake. There's significant surface showings.
The porphyries are dated at the exact same time as the Hemlo porphyry. Some of them are two to three and a half times the size of the porphyry at Hemlo proper. There's a significant amount of regional potential that you as Wheaton investors and potentially Hemlo investors, that can be exploited over the years to come. That talks to the exploration and the area of interest that these Wheaton streams are affected by. Quickly, just a snapshot on our corporate objectives and our timelines. Most recently, we graduated to the TSX. We are very fortunate to work with two great First Nations partners, Biigtigong and Neyaashiinigmiing. Both IBAs are in place for the life of mine. That's a unique way to do IBAs. Commonly, they're renegotiated as chief and council get reelected every three to five years. We put out our updated resource.
We've done our sector evaluation. We've done mill upgrades. We've done preventative maintenance underground. We've kicked off 130,000-meter drill program. We hosted a bunch of people at site because believe it or not, the last people at site were at 9/11, and all the analysts and buy-side investors were grounded. It was good to have people back up at such an iconic asset. We will be doing an NYSE listing. We just got included into the GDXJ, and there's potential for other U.S. indices to be included in. With that, I will kick it off for questions.
Is your business strategy Hemlo-specific, or will you consider other adventures, acquisitions, other things, since you have a good growth phase now?
Yeah. Our real strategy is to become the next Canadian mining franchise. We're a very young and hungry entrepreneurial team, and having partners like Wheaton that give us some flexibility to do interesting and accretive transactions, we will be looking at accretive M&A. As I said, we're a very technical team, so our COO, Éric Tremblay, who built Canadian Malartic, one of the largest gold mines in Canada, has to see something different operationally. Myself and our geology team has to see something different geologically. We do not want to be a single asset company. As everyone knows, there's a little bit of risk with a single asset producer. We will look at accretive M&A once we are through our Phase 2 growth plans.
Thanks, Jason, and congratulations on all the success. Derick Ma at TD Cowen. With the recent substation outage-
I was waiting for this one.
I have to ask about that, yeah. What impact will that have on the targeted ramp-up to 4,800 tons per day in 2027, and what are some second order impacts on other mining areas that you talked about that we could see?
Yeah. The substation that went down, unfortunately, it happened probably in the worst area. We didn't have a critical spare on site, to be fully transparent. We ordered one, part of our due diligence process last year because what a critical spare is to Barrick is completely different from what a critical spare is to Hemlo. What that really does is delays our ramp up by about three to four months. I don't think it's worth a $250 million haircut, but that's besides the point. It's a localized area within the Alimak mining area. We've put in a bypass so we can still produce out of that area, albeit at a lower rate. A small impact and really what the impact is a three to four month delay.
Is there a way to offset it from some of the other ones?
Yeah. So what we have done is we have resequenced some of the mining over the last week. But it still will have an impact, because there is only enough power to run one jumbo and two fans. So your cycle times are going to slow down. So we can still maintain our 3,800 ton per day run rate as we were in the first half of this year. But we are delayed to execute on that 4,800 ton per day scenario, which we guided that we would hit by the end of the year. We do not have formal guidance out right now, but we strongly believe that all we have in this business is our word. So we have decided to press release that and be transparent with all of our shareholders.
I think that is everything. Thanks so much, Jason, to you and the team for being here.
Thank you very much.
There we go. Good morning, everyone. My name is Patrick Drouin, and I am the President of Wheaton Precious Metals International. That is a wholly owned sub down in Grand Cayman. I am also the Chief Sustainability Officer for the Wheaton Group, and that is the hat I will be wearing today for this presentation. At Wheaton, sustainability is woven into every aspect of our business. It is a core value that underpins how we evaluate opportunities, how we engage with our mining partners, and how we create long-term value for our shareholders. Our philosophy is quite simple. The stronger our communities are, the stronger our partners are, the stronger we are.
As a streaming company, our sustainability strategy does focus on the areas where we can have meaningful influence. We do align our approach with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and focus on strong governance, responsible investment practices, and community impact.
These priorities help us manage risk, identify opportunities, and support the long-term success of the assets that generate our cash flows. Sustainability is embedded directly into our investment process. Every opportunity we look at goes through a rigorous ESG due diligence alongside technical and financial assessments. That review can influence whether or not we proceed with an investment, it can have an impact on the discount rate that we use to value an opportunity, and it may result in us including additional terms into a contract to make sure our partners are adhering to best practices. It is important to note that once we do close a transaction, our work does not stop. We do maintain ESG profiles for all of our operating assets. As Wes alluded to earlier, we do have regular interaction with our partners, as well as doing site visits on a frequent basis.
In some cases, we will actually bring in a third-party independent evaluator to assess the performance of our partners relative to internationally recognized standards. The results of our due diligence and our engagement is meaningful. As you can see, 91% of our production does come from operations that already adhere to industry-leading standards, and 95% of our production comes from assets that adhere to the GISTM. For investors, this reinforces the quality of our portfolio as well as our focus on managing ESG risk in the long term. Community investment is an important part of how we create shared value and one of the areas where we can have direct and measurable impact. As Haytham alluded to earlier, since 2009, Wheaton has invested over $62 million in community initiatives, and that commitment continues to grow.
Our budget is directly linked to our financial performance, which reflects our belief that as Wheaton succeeds, the communities connected to our businesses should benefit as well. Our investments are structured around four different pillars: health and wellbeing, education, climate and nature, and community development. These areas align with 10 different UN Sustainable Development Goals and really help address some of the most important challenges facing communities around the world. In 2025, we deployed $9.4 million into community initiatives, and you can see the budget for this year is at $14.1 million. This growth reflects both the scale and growth of our portfolio, as well as our confidence that these values do indeed create value. The strength of the program is evident both in its reach, but more importantly, in impact that we see directly.
In 2025, we supported more than 50 partner-led programs across nine operating sites and three development projects in eight different countries. In addition, we supported over 100 local organizations in Vancouver and the Cayman Islands. But what really makes an impact is that we visit these programs on a regular basis. Seeing these initiatives firsthand gives us a unique perspective to the real benefits they deliver, whether that is improved access to education and healthcare, stronger local economies, or healthier environments. These experiences really reinforce our belief that community investment is a powerful way to create shared value, to help our partners strengthen their social license to operate, and to contribute to the long-term resilience of the regions in which our partners have mines and projects. By building stronger communities, we help foster the stable and supportive operating environments that are crucial for long-term mining success.
In addition to the community investment, we help drive innovation across the mining industry through our Future of Mining Challenge. Each year, Wheaton awards a $1 million prize to breakthrough solutions that can improve operational efficiencies and drive environmental performance across this sector. Recent winners have focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by innovative milling technologies, as well as transforming mining wastewater into clean and reusable water. For the upcoming challenge, we are targeting technologies that reduce land disturbance and minimize mining's footprint. We launched that earlier this year and have a very good number of applicants, and we're excited to be announcing that at PDAC here in Toronto in early next year. Through the challenge, we're seeking to identify solutions to the industry's most sustainability challenges and help to support solutions that can potentially improve the sector as a whole and not just one operation.
I'll finish with the external validation of our approach. Wheaton continues to be recognized as a sustainability leader by key ESG rating organizations. We are top ranked according to Sustainalytics and the global leader. We maintain a AAA rating by MSCI. We're prime rated by ISS. Corporate Knights has deemed us both one of the world's 100 most sustainable companies, as well as among Canada's 50 best corporate citizens. These recognitions certainly are nice, but they're not the objective. Rather, they're evidence that our disciplined approach to governance, partner engagement, and community investment is creating value and positioning Wheaton for long-term success. Ultimately, sustainability is not just about managing risk. It's about strengthening our portfolio, enhancing resilience, and supporting durable returns for our shareholders.
Our goal is to ensure that Wheaton's portfolio remains the highest quality in the industry and positioned to deliver long-term value throughout the commodity price cycle. With that, I'll hand it over to Vincent to talk about our financial strength and discipline.
Thanks, Patrick. Our streaming model works. With predictable costs and high margins, our business delivers high-quality recurring cash flows. That gives us a very strong financial foundation. This foundation today and going forward is what I want to talk about. We have just deployed over $5.5 billion of upfront payments in the last 12 months. We've been through the most acquisitive period in this company's history, and yet we're still in a very strong financial position. We have a net debt position of $1.9 billion, which is a leverage ratio of roughly 0.6x . Very conservative level. We have $4 billion of committed debt facilities, which together with the accordion, gives us $2.6 billion of immediate liquidity for us to pursue new streams. Even if we drew down on the full $2.6 billion, our leverage ratio would only rise to about 1.5x , a very manageable level.
Our financial position is only getting stronger going forward. The top chart shows our estimated operating cash flows. We are going to generate over $2.5 billion of operating cash flows in the next 12 months, which will bring us back to a net cash position by the end of next year. Our liquidity is also growing significantly, giving us ample capacity to pursue new transactions. This is a business that self-funds its growth. Having these very strong cash flows, it makes a lot of sense to fund a portion of our growth with debt instead of equity. In the history of this company, we have used about $7 billion of debt to pay for upfront payments. If we had issued equity instead of debt, we would have issued 250 million more shares than is currently outstanding. That is 55% of our current share count.
That is dilution our shareholders did not need to experience, and that is the value of a deliberate capital structure. The debt facilities we do have work very well for us. For one, it is an attractive cost of capital. It is less than 5% interest rate. It is penalty-free repayment. We can repay it as quickly as we want and minimizing our negative carry. It is covenant light. We only have one financial covenant in our revolver, and it is going to give us a lot of flexibility. The last point, having access to capital in the streaming world is very important. When you can fund a large deal where you do not have to access new capital, that gives you speed, flexibility, and certainty on execution, and that is what the $2.5 billion revolver gives us. I want to switch gears a bit and talk about capital allocation.
With a strong financial foundation, we have a lot of ability to return capital back to shareholders. We have a progressive dividend, one that we have increased significantly in the last 10 years. We have increased it by 370% in the last 10 years, and 18% alone last year. The way we think about capital allocation is very straightforward. What gives us the highest value per share impact? On the dividend, we will keep increasing that, just like we have in the past decade. An increase to the dividend is a statement of confidence about the quality of our growth and our cash flows. On new streams, as Haytham said, we will only pursue new accretive streams. It is always quality and value over quantity and size.
The pipeline that we currently have is as robust as we have seen it, and an accretive stream is one that can compound value for decades to come, and that is the area we see the bulk of our capital going towards. As our cash continues to build and grow, we are going to have significant capacity to return capital back to shareholders through other means. At Wheaton, we measure everything on a per share basis, and that is how we ensure our strong financial foundation translates into long-term shareholder value. With that, we are going to move into a Q&A panel with our management team. I will invite everyone to come up.
Does anyone have a question? If not, we got up here for nothing.
Hi. Derick Ma. Thank you, everyone. This on? It is on. Okay. Thank you for taking the time. Globally, we are seeing rising bond yields. How does the potential for higher cost of capital change the way you look at the balance sheet, one, and how you fund transactions going forward? You just talked about that, Vincent, but can you give us a flavor of how that might change your strategy going forward?
Yeah. I think we look at the cost of capital of a stream through the cycles, right? We do not price things kind of off of what the spot interest rates are. That is one indicator, and that is obviously a piece of competition against a stream. We always have to look at that, but when we price a stream, we really try to look at what the long-term cost of capital is. We look at what the 10-year bond is trading at, 30-year bond, and we kind of price adjust on that basis. We also look at what our own cost of capital is. There is no one single number, but I would say, with the bond yields rising, that is only to our advantage, where the stream creates even more of a value proposition for potential partners, being a much lower form of cost of capital.
Let me ask one more, and I will hand it off. We have seen some large net margin royalties that are transacting recently. There could be other large ones to come. You have some royalties on the portfolio, but it is outside of Wheaton's wheelhouse, let us say. Is a royalty transaction something that Wheaton would consider? How do you get comfortable from a due diligence perspective on something where you might be taking OpEx or CapEx risk?
Sure. Maybe I will take that, and then I will pass it over to Neil to make some comments, if you want, on that. Just from a royalty versus stream perspective, it is always, from our perspective, better to create a stream, because we can control what the existing narrative, what the security, what the structure a parent company guarantees, et cetera. We have competed on royalties in the past. What we have found is a lot of those royalties do not have the structure that we actually can aggressively bid on, which is one of the reasons we do not have a lot of cash flowing royalties. The royalties that we do have in our portfolio are royalties that we acquired because we wanted ROFRs on future financings, and that is what we have on every single one of those royalties.
That gives us the last look before they do a funding transaction for it, and that is why we acquire royalties. We are a streaming company. We will continue to do so. Maybe I will pass it over to Neil. Do you want to talk a little bit maybe just opportunities for
Sure. I was going to say on the royalties, strict NSR on a precious metals opportunity can be attractive. When you get into other royalty structures, can be less attractive when you get the cost exposure. Then, of course, when you get NSRs on base metal operations, then we know where the precious metal portion is a much smaller component, is not nearly attractive to us. Yes, we do look at them, but not with the same enthusiasm I say we put into streams. You mentioned the pipeline. Yeah, I would say, just touching on that it is very similar to what we chatted about on our second quarter conference call. We are seeing opportunities in the $200 million-$500 million range. The pipeline is robust. There is a lot of processes on the go. They are all inconveniently timed, it seems, around this fall in the Colorado conferences.
So expect the team to have a very busy fall with travel schedule and getting back out and visiting potential sites.
Not to belabor the point too much, but when it comes to existing royalties, we do find that it might look attractive on day one. The asset may be a great opportunity, but back to the presentation. When you layer on what we normally look for, and we look at what was actually in this document that's already been papered, we're just like, well, we just A lot of the upside's been given away or all the upfront capital has been put in. It's pre-permitting. There's no protections for the- w e just find that the terms and conditions aren't what we would have put together. So we struggle to get to the value that we would on our own stream.
Is that the same for an NPI?
Even more so for an NPI. That goes back to Neil's point about the fact that you're now taking cost risk. Not only are you taking you don't have all the protections that we normally look for. In addition to that, you're now taking cost risk on the operations, capital cost risk, operating cost risk. So those would definitely be something we would have to really struggle if we were going to look at that. We would definitely I mean, never say never, but it would have to be a very attractive project.
You have to price it almost like an equity investment, right? Why would you buy an NPI for a much higher premium than you would buying the equity of the actual mining company? That's the trade-off you have to look at. There has been instances in the past where our peers have done that, and it's not something we pursued.
So that being said, it does not mean we will not compete on the same processes. What we typically do is we will put in a bid that we think reflects what the value of the actual royalty is at that time, and if that forces our competitors to pay more, that is less money in their pocket and more opportunities for us to stretch on in the future.
Brian MacArthur, Raymond James. First of all, I think this is great that you have spent a lot of time talking about security, drop-downs, buybacks, and everything from your perspective. If I take the other side of that, what is the thing that people push back more on when you are trying to get these deals? I mean, 15 years ago, you might not even had to do a drop-down or anything. What is the biggest sticking point you find when you lose deals? Is it drop-downs, buybacks? Is it parent guarantee? Maybe talk a little bit how that has evolved over the last number of years.
Maybe I will just make a couple comments, then I will pass it over to Curt. The one thing you have to recognize is the streaming industry has evolved quite significantly in the last 22 years. You are right, initially, we could enter into stream with fixed production payments. We could enter into streams for the life of mine without any drop-downs, et cetera.
What we have actually and we evolved quickly in this front. What we have actually tried to do is provide a thoughtful approach to financing mechanisms. When we look at an actual streaming opportunity, we do not just look at the existing how much is starting out over the next five years. We will look and say, okay, it is starting at X number of ounces, but the grades drop by 40% 10 years from now, and they drop by another 20% after that. We will structure.
That is why the drop-downs make sense because we are trying to limit how much of the margins that we take so that the stream continues to be very, very. The asset continues to be very, very strong. That gives that creativity and that thoughtful approach gives us a little bit more, I would say, credibility with the counterparty. That is something that we look to. Curt, you want to talk a little bit more about that?
Sure. I have been with Wheaton since 2008, so 18 years. Coming up 18 years. Over that time, there has been various pressures on the streaming space, and so you asked over the years. Certainly, there was periods of time where buybacks were very important. There was another period of time where I remember price sharing was very important, where they said, "Listen, 20% of spot price, but if silver goes above X dollars, you are going to share 50% or 70%." We were pretty adamant that no, we are going to stick with our fundamental structure, and if we lose the deal, we lose the deal. There was a lot of pressure. It was like, well, others are doing it. We are going to lose this deal if we do not do it, and that is like, that is fine.
We are big enough that we should have a say in how this industry evolves, and we shouldn't just accept this is where the others are doing. If they want to do it, they can do it. That is the historical context. Presently, I think the streaming model for the most part is now accepted as to how it gets structured. So you have a 20% production payment. You will have the one drop-down. You do see pressure at the fringes, but we resist that. I would say, but others may have different views. I would say the biggest reason we lose deals now would be either it does not pass our technical mustard, so we are just not interested in it, or others are It is just a price, the upfront dollar number.
That is the main gating item is we just don't see the value that others maybe see there, or that we don't believe the project. We have done our own technical model. We have hampered it, or we don't see the exploration potential. So we just won't get there on value. If we get there on value, I like to think we are creative enough that we can work through some of the other issues and find different solutions. Koné was a good example of that. Martino mentioned that, right, where they had a pretty unique property. We did some really unique things there. We burned the midnight hour to get to those outcomes, but I think we got to a win-win solution where both parties are happy. But that first hurdle is just value.
Maybe just talk a little bit about how much equity you are willing to put in versus a stream on a deal, what sort of percentages, constraints, and how you view that going forward. Obviously, equities have worked out pretty well and you have used it to fund other things, but just how you think about that going forward.
One of the reasons that the streaming model works is because a lot of the counterparties that we look at want to avoid dilution at all costs. The only time that we will actually put equity in is when they want us to put equity in. We don't ever look to say, "We need to have X number of dollars invested in your equity." What we do try to come up with is these fully funded structures whereby we're coming in with a stream, we're coming in with a working capital facility, cost overrun facility, whatever's required to get them there.
After all that, if it's still not enough, rather than have them go take on some additional debt, then potentially we would look at participating equity and give them that lead order that helps them get that equity financing across the line, which we've seen work time and time again. You're right, we've crystallized a lot of gains on our equity positions, most recently when we acquired the $4.3 billion Antamina stream. It pays off. We're not money managers. We're going to leave that to the smarter people in the room and on the webcast, but we will look for ways to continue to help our partners grow their assets. If we have to put in equity because they want us to, we will be there.
Hi, this is Larry Liu from CIBC. Thanks for taking my question. I'll just have the first one towards Neil. Neil, I apologize in advance, could be a multi-part question. I learned from the best. I guess one thing we started to notice is the streamers started supporting acquisitions. It's a main way to get financing for these parties. I guess what makes Wheaton stand out as a partner? I know Wheaton's very comprehensive in terms of technical service. Is that why? Second part to the question is, Jason gave us a really good presentation earlier on the upside they see at Hemlo. What do you do to bake that into your numbers? How much upside should we see in terms of the future as well?
Sure. Yeah. Thanks for that. It's interesting you mentioned Hemlo, and that was, over the years, we have bid on and looked to assist various companies through M&A, and it just hasn't worked out. Hemlo was the first time we were actually involved in successfully assisting a purchaser of an asset, which was a great outcome and to have it linked to, as Jason described, one of the iconic mines in Canada was fantastic. When we went to the site, given the age of that site being 40 years old, you kind of go in and Barrick is selling it, you kind of go in expecting kind of a tired-looking asset. What we saw was the exact opposite. We saw a site that was very well maintained, a team that was very much engaged and really wanting to have more capacity to do more exploration.
We looked at what was available within the mine. We started with what is available for resources which have not yet been converted to reserves. In older mines, a lot of that is usually tied up in stuff that is close to backfill and stuff that realistically is not going to get mined. What we found at Hemlo was the exact opposite. There is a lot of these remnant resources, which we felt can quite easily be converted. When you look at the increased understanding of the geometry and folding of the ore body, there is a lot of drilling which highlights areas to explore and, Hemlo are already off to the races on that and putting out very attractive-looking exploration results, it seems like every other week.
Perfect. That is good to hear. My second question would be for you, Haytham. If we look at the last few years, Wheaton has done really well. You, Randy, and the team has brought the company to a long-term production target now to over 1 million ounces. Now, you being the CEO, what is your long-term goal for the company? Is it going to be 10 million ounces or where do you see the company going?
That is a good question.
Our goal, Randy's goal was 1 million ounces. We are approaching 1.2 million ounces by the end of this decade. Our objective is it is never a size. We are not trying to get to a certain number. We are trying to continue to acquire the highest quality, lowest cost assets. That is something we are seeing, and Neil and the team have done an incredible job at looking at these assets. We are probably looking at 25- 30 different opportunities right now, which is a pretty decent number of opportunities.
I would say, I think what I would like to see, and we have highlighted, just in terms of the growth of the company, we have added two to three different positions, two, and a third one that is coming on the geology, operations, and engineering side, and that is going to allow us to continue to look and grow the company even more. If you want an actual number, I would say, I would not be surprised to see us in the next 10 years hit 1.5 million gold- equivalent ounces.
It is really impressive that about half of the production is Vale, BHP, Glencore, first-class big companies with only 22 operating assets. As you vet a new asset, for example, Montage, a new company, new mines, new country, could you walk us through how you vetted the three levels of newness here and maybe one or two other case studies so that we understand how you move from Salobo, Vale to a new company?
Sure. Maybe I will start just with a quick comment on some of the growth that we are seeing. Obviously, one of the big avenues of growth in 2026 is Antamina and the acquisition we did there. But if you look at what we have actually done as an organization and where we have actually entered into, which continents we have gone into most recently, Africa has been one that is providing a lot of that growth in the near term. We have been looking at assets in Africa, various parts of Africa for the last- w ell, as long as I have been there and even before, so over 15, 16 years at least. Every time we look at an opportunity there, we found a very mature, deep, unstable asset that has social issues, over-employed, looking for government support. We just were not comfortable.
What we ended up doing when we went into Africa finally with Platreef, obviously with Allied Gold and with Montage, is we specifically targeted development projects that are brand new, that will be built using North American standards, that will be built by reputable companies that are out there and trying to continue to grow in a very efficient but safe way. That is very important for us, is just having that safe growth and a team that is aligned with how we view safety and culture. You want to add anything, Neil?
Yeah, I was going to say the mention of Montage, John, is an interesting one. We approach, especially a new jurisdiction like Côte d'Ivoire, and looking at it from a risk perspective, starting with the ore body. Very quickly, we got very comfortable with the work that had been done, and we are very pleased. And the exploration upside, which was discussed this morning. As we looked beyond that, the team, their track record of building mines in Africa. Very quickly, you gain this feeling that this is a group that has identified and developed a very good-looking ore body, which has got a lot of upside, and they are well-equipped to deliver on it.
John, in your question around how do we vet new assets that we are looking at, I think that was your question, so if this helps, it kind of comes back to Neil's presentation. First and foremost is the technical aspects of that mine. How excited is the team about that asset? We sit around as a team, there is probably, I do not know how many people in the room, 25, 20 people. Almost the entire team is in that room, and we look at our first cut of a deal and say, and geology and the technical folks, the metallurgists, their slides come up first.
And I am no technical expert, but we are guided by how excited do they get. If they are super excited, we find solutions to other problems. If you see some raised eyebrows or people not getting too excited, you do not stretch too much. You do not work too hard to get to the finish line. You do not stretch for value. That is probably our main gating item for when we come to a new asset, how excited do we get. It is really that first meeting I think of as a kind of our main gate that we look at.
I think our due diligence approach is also very in-depth, right. Like for a new partner, new country, we deep dive. We figure out, well, how is this company going to actually get cash out from that country into the supplier to fund our stream. So we go to that level of detail to make sure the whole chain works. And a lot of these kind of development stage assets are single mine companies. And we are very much kind of hand-in-hand working with them to figure out what their optimal capital structure looks like. We do not want them to have too much debt, but we also do not want them to obviously over dilute themselves. So our stream structures, in a sense, govern what that long-term capital structure looks like.
The due diligence part is very important, and then also being a partner, hand-in-hand designing what the outlook looks like as part of the process.
For new jurisdictions, we will turn to outside consultants if need be who have boots on the ground. People who have an in-depth understanding of what the jurisdiction is like. We put a lot of work into the political risk side of things as well.
We also have a significant amount of experience working with companies of all sizes. I mean, you look at there's 38 different companies in our portfolio right now. Although a lot of the production is coming from those larger companies, we have a lot of experience working with smaller companies right down to small private companies. When you're looking at these new assets and looking at the teams on there, you can judge across that entire portfolio and across all the network that we all have, the quality of the management team and the quality of the team that's actually going to take these things forward. That's a huge part of how you actually look at how we judge the opportunity.
We've had a few questions come on the webcast, so I'll just read one. How have IRRs changed over the life of the business, and how hard is it to generate attractive IRRs in a flat commodity price environment?
I am happy to take that question. When we look at a transaction, obviously it has to have a meaningful return for us too. Often when we first started, we were a much smaller competitive environment, so we were able to demand significantly higher IRRs in order to get these transactions done. It is very competitive right now. But the one thing you will see, and this was similar, for example, with the BHP stream on Antamina, is when we look at things, we do not just look at what is there.
When we are looking at our IRR, we are looking to see how much potential there is for continued expansion, not just how much the analysts are looking at based on the existing technical report that shows a reserve life of X number of years. We are looking and we are asking our team to share with us what the vision is.
What is the potential for the resources to go into reserves? What is the potential for these exploration targets that they have already drilled or hit up to actually be converted into resources? We value that all into our profile, but at different discount rates, obviously, to reflect the different levels of risk. We are still looking just about in every single transaction at a very, very decent return to our shareholders. Throughout our life of the company, our average return has been close to 20% on an annual basis. That is for the last 22 years. Obviously commodity prices have something to do with that, but it is also even with taking out commodity prices, we still have a very healthy return for our shareholders, and that is the most important thing is to return that value to our shareholders.
Another one from the webcast. Are you of the view that we are a few years away from a major CapEx cycle in copper, and thus near-term streaming opportunities are on gold projects?
You want to take that?
Sure. I would say, as we look at opportunities out there, the one we see the least amount of high quality in is new copper projects. Jervois is a smaller operation, but we got very excited about that one, and we are very happy and pleased to be supporting them. I think with copper price where it is, the copper mines or projects that have typically been perceived as being low grade are going to get a new light and I think there is going to be a lot of. Certainly, there is a lot of those in British Columbia, and we are pretty excited about those because they do contain, as you mentioned, a lot of precious metals.
I will also add, we have made the statement in the past that we are entering an era of multibillion-dollar streaming transactions. It took us five years from the first time we approached BHP to actually do the stream on Antamina with BHP. I do think that there are some significant porphyry projects that are going to be up and running in the next 5-10 years, and streaming will play an important part there, but it will take time. It is not like we are seeing a lot of these coming to fruition immediately. So I would hope that streaming as a competitive source of funding continues to contribute to the overall funding packages of these companies.
That actually leads nicely into the last webcast question, which is: Do you think the remaining silver production balance at Antamina is streamable, and would you take on additional exposure to Antamina?
Everything is streamable. We have had discussions with the remaining counterparty, Mitsubishi, obviously. Their objective is not to raise capital unless they have an actual financial need, a specific need that they are going to put it towards. At this point in time, they do not have a specific need. We continue to have conversations with them, and we will continue to do that. We have had them over the years. We will continue to do that going forward. So, we would hope that that would be the case. Antamina is one of these projects that even if you took the last 10% of the silver that is there, because it is run by this JV, it will continue to operate efficiently despite having streams on all the silver.
Hi, thank you for the presentation. This is David Ho from BMO. I have a couple questions on capital returns. You showed a slide earlier with the capital allocation framework, and I think there was a third bucket where you said additional returns. How should we think about that over the next probably four years, five years?
Sure. Like I said, we measure everything on a per share basis. Right now, we're seeing the ability to transact on new streaming transactions on a much more accretive way than buying back shares. That's why we're going to keep pursuing that route. But as we grow, we're generating $3 billion of operating cash flows per year. At some point, there may be a time when there isn't a lot of capacity left to invest, right? $3 billion of capital is a lot to deploy. The goal there was to paint the picture that down the road, we're going to have significant capacity to return capital back to shareholders, and we have to decide at that point what generates the highest value per share. But for now, it is definitely on the dividend and the new streams.
Okay. On new streams going forward, should we expect the same, to stay mostly in precious metals focused or-
Oh, yeah. We're 99% precious metals, and we'll continue to focus on that route.
100% precious metals going forward, for sure.
Thank you.
Any further questions from the room? Yeah.
I will just ask one more. Derick Ma, TD Cowen. Talking about the multibillion-dollar transactions or potential for transactions, these are step changes for any portfolio. I think you circled back a few years, no one thought a multibillion-dollar transaction was even on the table, so congratulations on Antamina. With those opportunities potentially on the horizon, one, where are those opportunities coming from your perspective? Then two, how does that potentially change the way you prioritize the pipeline or manage the balance sheet to optimize your financial flexibility to get those opportunities when they do come to market?
I mean, I will answer the first part of the question, and I will pass it over to Vincent. We are seeing a lot of these opportunities obviously coming from Latin America. Without specifically highlighting a country, we are seeing significant, I would say, encouraging exposure to these large porphyry copper projects and support from the governments, et cetera. So I think you are going to see a lot of that going forward, and then I will pass it over to Vincent for the second part of the question.
Yeah, I think to make sure we are kind of ready to go, we upsized our revolver recently to $2.5 billion. With the term loan, we have a lot of capacity. With our growth profile, we are going to continue to increase our cash flows. So this is a business that is going to keep recharging its balance sheet. We are going to be back to a net cash position in the end of next year. That means we have 2.5 billion or $4 billion of capacity at that point to pursue new transactions, and that should be more than sufficient given the pipeline that we currently see.
In terms of where these opportunities are going to come from, I think BHP's press release was as good an advertisement for that as anything else. They talked about the fact that they had a capital need, and they were able to take this byproduct credit that was not being valued in their portfolio and redeploy that for their core product. So anywhere you see a big company that has that scenario, that I think really put it on the map, and that certainly from our experience has flushed out a number of interested parties that are saying, "Oh, well, if BHP can do it, we should also look at it.
Certainly, we have been having conversations with groups that we have not had much exposure to in the past because of that BHP deal.
Just following up, because you did a $4.3 billion print, other people are coming to you. It is like the best advertisement in the world that you can do a $4.3 billion print. So it fulfills Haytham's guidance that there will be billion-dollar deals coming down the road.
Yeah. No, absolutely. Keep in mind, though, not every stream out there is a Wheaton stream. It has to have the quality. It has to be accretive. We have to be able to see the upside, and those are the ones that we will actually stretch for.
Thank you.
Hello. [Andrew Witt] from Edison. You have talked many times over the years about the discount to gold and silver prices that you use when you are valuing a potential stream. Given that gold and silver is substantially higher than last time you held an Investor Day, could you just tell us where you are now and how you are applying those discounts and valuation in your own mind when you are looking at potentially very long-term streams?
Sure. I can tell you that when we do look at discounting, we look at where we are in the precious metals cycle, specifically for gold and for silver. Obviously, we've had some strong runs, not so much in the silver side for sure, but not so much on the gold side. We think the gold is still very conservative. Without giving you an actual number, I would say that we're probably more aggressive on gold than we are on silver at this point in time. From a fundamental perspective, on both we're incredibly optimistic about the outlook for them.
Specifically, you look at what's happening in the U.S. on silver, for example, or not in the U.S. on silver, just in general, we've been in a silver supply deficit for a number of years, and we expect that to continue through the rest of the decade, but you've also got growth coming from electrification, decarbonization, AI data centers, 5G networks, and solar seems to be picking up the last few months as well. You're seeing all this additional demand, but that doesn't even state the case for investment demand, which is going to be one of the biggest drivers for silver prices going forward, which is one of the reasons that we're still optimistic and looking at silver opportunities.
On the gold side, obviously gold is a safe haven metal, and what we've seen globally right now in terms of geopolitical turmoil, et cetera, that has resulted in what I would say a lot of concern about the strength of the U.S. dollar longer term. Obviously, we're expecting a couple of increases in terms of interest rates over the next three to six months. But longer term, with a $2 trillion federal budget deficit and the overall debt levels continuing to grow, our view of the U.S. dollar is not positive, which is very positive for gold prices longer term.
Unless there are any other questions in the room, I will hand it over to Haytham for closing remarks. Going once, going twice. Haytham.
Thanks, Emma. Slide 73 that you are seeing here demonstrates how this disciplined approach to capital allocation, that Vincent talked about and many of us have mentioned today, consistently returns value to our shareholders and has been a better investment than investing in commodities alone or various precious metals focused indices over multiple time frames as you see. You have got the one year, three year, five year and 10 year there. I think as you have noticed, what we have tried to emphasize today is the Wheaton difference and why we have been and will continue to be successful. We have got a strong management team that owns its decisions. Everybody you see here, as well as directors and et cetera, everybody is looking for ways to grow this company, but it has to be accretive and we take responsibility for the decisions we make.
We have got to focus on high quality assets that has gotten us to where we are today. Not every stream is a Wheaton stream, and I think you have heard me say that about three times today. It is very important for you to understand that sometimes we will bid, but again, it is not necessarily to win that transaction. Sometimes it is to ensure that there is a fair price being paid for a transaction that possibly more than fair that we are not willing to pay.
The importance of strong stream structures is what Curt and Vincent highlight to protect us and provide shareholders with comfort knowing that we have done so. We have seen some volatility on this front with some of our counterparties or our competitors, and we are trying to protect our shareholders so they can go to sleep at night knowing that when they get up in the morning, they are protected.
An organic growth profile that is second to none in the streaming industry. We have got 400,000 oz of gold equivalent growth between now and the end of the decade, and that is very certain, very conservative growth. A continued focus on precious metals, which has gotten us to where we are today. That is not going to change. Somebody asked the question earlier. All these factors make Wheaton a foundation stock to own in any portfolio, and that is the one message we are trying to get across, is that is not going to change. With that, I will say thank you to our partners, our shareholders, and to the investors, analysts, and associates who took the time out of their busy schedules to be here today and who joined us by webcast.
For those here in person, I invite you to join us for lunch and continue the conversation with the senior management team. Thank you all once again.